Kyber Hardware Accelerator Parallel Key Exchange

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Solution Overview

Problem

Current post-quantum cryptography solutions like CRYSTALS-Kyber face performance overhead due to large keys and computational requirements, reducing TLS connections per second and requiring optimizations for efficient key exchange.

Innovation Solution

A Kyber hardware accelerator with multiple SHA-3 hash engines is used to parallelize operations for generating Matrix A, secret vectors, and public keys, leveraging SHA-3 engines to perform independent operations in parallel, reducing latency and enhancing performance.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Reliability

If CRYSTALS-Kyber is used for secure key exchange, then quantum-safe security is achieved, but performance overhead increases due to large keys and computational requirements

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvequantum-safe securityVSAvoidTLS connections per second

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSProductivity

Solution Approach 1:

The patent divides the key exchange protocol into separate encapsulation and decapsulation phases, allowing independent optimization of each phase. The encapsulation phase generates public keys and ciphertexts, while the decapsulation phase computes shared secrets, enabling specialized hardware acceleration for each segment to improve overall throughput without compromising security

Inventive Principle:

Principle #1Segmentation

Solution Approach 2:

The patent transitions from software-based cryptographic operations to hardware-based acceleration, adding a spatial dimension (hardware circuitry) to the computational process. This dimensional shift enables parallel processing of polynomial operations and hash functions, significantly increasing TLS connection throughput while maintaining quantum-safe security standards

Inventive Principle:

Principle #17Another dimension (Dimensionality change)

2Reliability

If CRYSTALS-Kyber is used for secure key exchange, then quantum-safe security is achieved, but computational time increases due to large key sizes

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvequantum-safe securityVSAvoidkey exchange latency

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSLoss of time

Solution Approach 1:

The patent pre-generates and stores the public key matrix A during the encapsulation phase, making it available for subsequent decapsulation operations. This preliminary action eliminates the need to regenerate the public key matrix during each key exchange, reducing computational time and latency while maintaining the security properties of the Kyber protocol

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The patent creates hardware-copied versions of cryptographic primitives (polynomial multiplication, hash functions) that can be executed in parallel. Multiple copies of the computational logic operate simultaneously on different data segments, reducing the overall time required for key exchange while preserving the mathematical security foundations of CRYSTALS-Kyber

Inventive Principle:

Principle #26Copying

Data Source

PatentUS20250007693A1Method and apparatus to reduce performance overhead associated with the use of kyber for secure key exchange

Publication Date: 2025.01.02 INTEL CORP

AI summary

Kyber is a secure key encapsulation mechanism (KEM) for secure key exchange. Performance overhead associated with use of Kyber for secure key exchange is reduced by computing multiple coefficients of different polynomials for independent operations in parallel and localizing them in memory for fast access for polynomial multiplications used in key generation, encapsulation, and decapsulation allowing for parallelization of Keccak calls.