Abstract
RISC-V-based hardware/software co-design has become an established methodology for implementing post-quantum cryptography (PQC) on embedded devices. Its software programmability, extensible instruction-set architecture, and optional dedicated accelerators create a broad design space that offers the flexibility required for crypto-agility and post-deployment updates. For HQC, a PQC key-encapsulation mechanism selected for standardization, several RISC-V-based implementations have already been published. However, these works explore only a small subset of this design space. We present, to the best of our knowledge, the most comprehensive exploration of RISC-V-based HQC. Our exploration is centered around a new, parametrizable architecture framework on which we characterize 29,920 distinct architectural configurations across all three HQC security levels on FPGA. The Pareto-optimal configurations from this framework outperform the state-of-the-art RISC-V-based HQC implementation, ranging from 4.8x lower LUT utilization at 17% lower latency to 69.6x lower latency at 30% lower LUT utilization, while also requiring up to 10.6x fewer block RAMs.
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Publication details
- Journal
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- Open access
- Green open access
Cite this article
APA 7
Schöffel, M., Feldmann, J., Biehl, E., & Wehn, N. (2026). Efficient HQC Implementations on RISC-V: A Cross-Layer Design Space Exploration. https://omanscience.com/en/articles/efficient-hqc-implementations-on-risc-v-a-cross-layer-design-space-exploration
MLA 9
Schöffel, Maximilian, et al. "Efficient HQC Implementations on RISC-V: A Cross-Layer Design Space Exploration." https://omanscience.com/en/articles/efficient-hqc-implementations-on-risc-v-a-cross-layer-design-space-exploration.
Chicago (author–date)
Schöffel, Maximilian, Johannes Feldmann, Elias Biehl, and Norbert Wehn. 2026. "Efficient HQC Implementations on RISC-V: A Cross-Layer Design Space Exploration." https://omanscience.com/en/articles/efficient-hqc-implementations-on-risc-v-a-cross-layer-design-space-exploration.
Harvard
Schöffel, M., Feldmann, J., Biehl, E. and Wehn, N. (2026) 'Efficient HQC Implementations on RISC-V: A Cross-Layer Design Space Exploration', Available at: https://omanscience.com/en/articles/efficient-hqc-implementations-on-risc-v-a-cross-layer-design-space-exploration.
Vancouver
Schöffel M, Feldmann J, Biehl E, Wehn N. Efficient HQC Implementations on RISC-V: A Cross-Layer Design Space Exploration. https://omanscience.com/en/articles/efficient-hqc-implementations-on-risc-v-a-cross-layer-design-space-exploration
IEEE
M. Schöffel, J. Feldmann, E. Biehl, and N. Wehn, "Efficient HQC Implementations on RISC-V: A Cross-Layer Design Space Exploration," https://omanscience.com/en/articles/efficient-hqc-implementations-on-risc-v-a-cross-layer-design-space-exploration.