A High-Performance Curve25519 and Curve448 Unified Elliptic Curve Cryptography Accelerator

2024-09-23

IEEE Conference on High Performance Extreme Computing

AI Summary

To address the low-latency secure communication requirements of critical infrastructure (e.g., smart grids), this work proposes a unified elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) hardware accelerator supporting both Curve25519 and Curve448, targeting 128-bit and 224-bit security levels. The design introduces a novel unified architecture enabling shared resource utilization across both curves, deeply optimizes the Montgomery ladder algorithm for scalar multiplication, and leverages pseudo-Mersenne and Solinas prime field properties to implement an efficient parallel modular multiplication unit. Additionally, it integrates multiple side-channel countermeasures—including constant-time execution and random Boolean masking—to ensure robust physical security. Implemented in ASIC, the accelerator achieves signature latencies of 10.38 μs (Curve25519) and 54.01 μs (Curve448), with corresponding energy consumptions of 0.72 μJ and 3.73 μJ. Both performance and energy efficiency set new state-of-the-art benchmarks at the time of publication.

Technology Category

• Machine Learning: Hardware-aware ML
• Search and Optimization: Distributed Search
• Application Domains: Security

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Applications of cryptography
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Energy management for devices in mobile Web and WoT environments
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems

Abstract

In modern critical infrastructure such as power grids, it is crucial to ensure security of data communications between network-connected devices while following strict latency criteria. This necessitates the use of cryptographic hardware accelerators. We propose a high-performance unified elliptic curve cryptography accelerator supporting NIST standard Montgomery curves Curve25519 and Curve448 at 128-bit and 224-bit security levels respectively. Our accelerator implements extensive parallel processing of Karatsuba-style large-integer multiplications, restructures arithmetic operations in the Montgomery Ladder and exploits special mathematical properties of the underlying pseudo-Mersenne and Solinas prime fields for optimized performance. Our design ensures efficient resource sharing across both curve computations and also incorporates several standard side-channel countermeasures. Our ASIC implementation achieves record performance and energy of 10.38 μS / 54.01 μs and 0.72 μJ / 3.73μJ respectively for Curve25519 / Curve448, which is significantly better than state-of-the-art.

Problem

• Ensuring secure data communications in critical infrastructure
• Designing a high-performance unified ECC accelerator
• Optimizing performance for Curve25519 and Curve448

Innovation

• Unified accelerator for Curve25519 and Curve448
• Parallel Karatsuba-style multiplication processing
• Optimized Montgomery Ladder arithmetic operations