XMSS and Embedded Systems

We describe a software-hardware co-design for the hash-based post-quantum signature scheme XMSS on a RISC-V embedded processor. We provide software optimizations for the XMSS reference implementation for SHA-256 parameter sets and several hardware accelerators that allow to balance area usage and performance based on individual needs. By integrating our hardware accelerators into the RISC-V processor, the version with the best time-area product generates a key pair (that can be used to generate \(2^{10}\) signatures) in 3.44 s, achieving an over \(54 \times \) speedup in wall-clock time compared to the pure software version. For such a key pair, signature generation takes less than 10 ms and verification takes less than 6 ms, bringing speedups of over \(42 \times \) and \(17 \times \) respectively. We tested and measured the cycle count of our implementation on an Intel Cyclone V SoC FPGA. The integration of our XMSS accelerators into an embedded RISC-V processor shows that it is possible to use hash-based post-quantum signatures for a large variety of embedded applications.