LOKI Low-Latency Open-Source Kyber-Accelerator IPs

CRYSTALS-Kyber is a lattice-based key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) recognized as one of the finalist algorithms in NIST’s post-quantum cryptography (PQC) standardization process. Polynomial multiplications and hash functions, as essential operations in lattice-based PQC schemes, pose a significant time consumption challenge with respect to nowadays cryptographic protocols. This work addresses these computational efforts by incorporating LOKI, an accelerator, into a RISC-V microcontroller. By leveraging the accelerator, the performance can be enhanced, contributing to the overall efficiency of Kyber in the fundamental tasks of key generation, encryption, and decryption operations. Through empirical evaluations and benchmarking, the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed hardware architectures are demonstrated, highlighting their potential to advance the field of post-quantum cryptography.