PQShield, a leading quantum-safe cryptography provider, has partnered with RISC-V processing pioneer SiFive to deliver post-quantum cryptography on SiFive’s Essential and Performance high-performance processor families. This integration will protect critical systems in aerospace, consumer, defense, and automotive industries from quantum attacks and accelerate the adoption of NIST post-quantum cryptography standards on RISC-V technologies.
As powerful quantum computers are expected to crack current encryption standards, a new cybersecurity benchmark has emerged through NIST’s standardization of post-quantum cryptography algorithms. To stay ahead of hackers, hardware and software manufacturers are migrating their products to PQC encryptions in line with NIST’s new standards.
Graeme Hickey, PQShield’s VP of Engineering, and Yann Loisel, Principal Security Architect at SiFive, have collaborated on this project, which will enable product designers leveraging SiFive’s RISC-V processors to build products that comply with NIST’s recently published standards for post-quantum cryptography without compromising performance or lifecycle.
Advancing Post-Quantum Cryptography in RISC-V Computing
The partnership between PQShield, a provider of quantum-safe cryptography solutions, and SiFive, a pioneer in RISC-V processing, aims to integrate post-quantum cryptography into SiFive’s Essential Core range of CPUs. This collaboration will enable the easy integration of post-quantum cryptography for RISC-V computing applications, future-proofing the rapid growth of RISC-V as the platform of choice for software and hardware innovators.
The integration of PQShield’s secure SCA-protected coprocessor, PQPlatform-CoPro, with SiFive’s Essential Core range of CPUs will provide a high level of protection and trust for critical systems in various sectors, including aerospace, consumer devices, defense, and automotive applications. This partnership aligns SiFive processors with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) new standards for post-quantum cryptography, ensuring that RISC-V computing applications are secure and resistant to quantum attacks.
The Need for Post-Quantum Cryptography
The advent of powerful quantum computers poses a significant threat to current encryption standards used to protect software and hardware applications globally. Quantum computers can easily crack these standards, enabling “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks, where attackers steal data today to crack into later with a quantum computer. To address this threat, governments and institutions are preparing for the quantum era by adopting post-quantum cryptography (PQC) algorithms that resist quantum attacks.
The NIST standardization of PQC algorithms has established a new cybersecurity benchmark, prompting hardware and software manufacturers to migrate their products to PQC encryptions in line with these standards. RISC-V, as an emerging system architecture, requires modernized cryptography to ensure it can operate securely and efficiently in harsh environments.
Integrating PQShield’s Technology with SiFive’s Processors
The integration of PQShield’s PQPlatform-CoPro technology with SiFive’s Essential RISC-V processors overcomes the challenge of modernizing RISC-V cryptography. This collaboration delivers a future-proof hardware security solution that can be implemented without compromising performance or lifecycle.
PQShield’s cryptographic libraries will also utilize RISC-V vector extensions for the first time, allowing developers to maintain post-quantum protection while taking advantage of the performance benefits of RISC-V vector extension implementations in SiFive Performance P470 CPUs. This partnership ensures that designers of RISC-V vector extensions will be working with the latest generation of cybersecurity.
Expert Insights
Graeme Hickey, PQShield’s VP of Engineering, emphasized the significance of this partnership: “Partnering with SiFive is a perfect match for PQShield as we co-authored NIST’s PQC standards and have contributed extensively to the RISC-V instructions extensions for cryptography. SiFive is revolutionizing RISC-V computing with its high-performance processors, and we are proud to partner with them to protect the aerospace, military, automotive, and consumer device technologies they are powering.”
Yann Loisel, Principal Security Architect at SiFive, highlighted the benefits of this collaboration: “Implementing post-quantum protection is a major step for our Essential and high-performance processors and a strong benefit to our customers. This collaboration ensures that designers of RISC-V vector extensions will be working with the latest generation of cybersecurity.”
About PQShield and SiFive
PQShield is a post-quantum cryptography company building quantum-safe cryptography solutions that modernize vital security systems and components of the global technology supply chain. Headquartered in the UK, with a 70-strong team across 10 countries, PQShield’s contributions have been recognized by Bloomberg, Wired, Fast Company, and the World Economic Forum.
SiFive is transforming the future of compute by bringing the limitless potential of RISC-V to the highest performance and most data-intensive applications in the world. As the pioneers who introduced RISC-V to the world, SiFive has enabled leading technology companies around the world to innovate, optimize, and deliver advanced solutions across every market segment of chip design.
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