MeNTT: A Compact and Efficient Processing-in-Memory Number Theoretic Transform (NTT) Accelerator
This addresses a critical performance issue in post-quantum cryptography for secure computing applications, representing an incremental improvement with domain-specific optimizations.
The paper tackles the latency and energy bottleneck of Number Theoretic Transform (NTT) in lattice-based cryptography by introducing MeNTT, a compact and efficient processing-in-memory accelerator that achieves significant reductions in latency and energy compared to prior works.
Lattice-based cryptography (LBC) exploiting Learning with Errors (LWE) problems is a promising candidate for post-quantum cryptography. Number theoretic transform (NTT) is the latency- and energy- dominant process in the computation of LWE problems. This paper presents a compact and efficient in-MEmory NTT accelerator, named MeNTT, which explores optimized computation in and near a 6T SRAM array. Specifically-designed peripherals enable fast and efficient modular operations. Moreover, a novel mapping strategy reduces the data flow between NTT stages into a unique pattern, which greatly simplifies the routing among processing units (i.e., SRAM column in this work), reducing energy and area overheads. The accelerator achieves significant latency and energy reductions over prior arts.