Last week Richard Newell, Chair of RISC-V’s Cryptographic Extensions Task Group (CETG), expressed thanks for the contributions from members of PQShield’s team towards the ratification of 15 new cryptographic extensions.
The Chair made special mention of two specific member of PQShield’s team: Ben Marshall, who was the main contributor to the several Scalar Crypto extensions, and Markku-Juhani O. Saarinen, who contributed most of the Entropy Source and “Constant Time” extensions.
Since then, RISC-V have formally announced the ratification of fifteen new specifications, representing more than 40 extensions, for its free and open instruction set architecture (ISA). Notable amongst these is the Scalar Cryptography specification, which lowers the barrier to entry for secure and efficient accelerated cryptography in IoT and embedded devices.
Ben Marshall from PQShield and member of the RISC-V Technical Steering Committee comments:
“The RISC-V Scalar Cryptography extensions allow for implementing standard cryptographic hash and block cipher algorithms that are an order of magnitude faster than using standard instructions in some cases. With RISC-V’s transparent and open approach, anyone can efficiently implement critical cryptographic algorithms in any class of CPU. In addition to the performance benefits, these new extensions are very cheap to implement, so companies can integrate popular cryptography algorithms in even the smallest connected devices.”
The ratification of the new extensions comes ahead of the RISC-V Summit on 6-8th December. Register here to find out more.