Ascon was designed to be easy to implement, without dependencies on other ciphers, finite field arithmetics or similar. The core permutation can be implemented efficiently in both hardware and software. Find out more on advantages of the Ascon design for optimized software and hardware implementations in the submission document.
Several software and hardware implementations are collected in our GitHub repository.
Software Reference Implementations
The repository features both the reference implementation and optimized implementations (64-bit) of Ascon-128 and Ascon-128a. For a detailed overview of the performance of Ascon-128 and Ascon-128a on different CPUs we refer to eBAEAD.
| Ascon-128a | Ascon-128, Ascon-80pq | Ascon-Hasha, Ascon-Xofa | Ascon-Hash, Ascon-Xof | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMD EPYC 7742 | 4.2 c/B | 6.5 c/B | 12.4 c/B | |
| AMD Ryzen 9 5950X | 5.2 c/B | 8.1 c/B | 11.7 c/B | 15.8 c/B |
| Apple M1 (ARMv8) | 6.3 c/B | 9.3 c/B | 18.5 c/B | |
| Cortex-A72 (ARMv8) | 7.0 c/B | 10.5 c/B | 14.2 c/B | 20.0 c/B |
| Intel Xeon E5-2609 v4 | 7.2 c/B | 10.6 c/B | 14.0 c/B | 21.2 c/B |
| Intel Core i5-6300U | 7.8 c/B | 11.4 c/B | 15.5 c/B | 23.1 c/B |
| Intel Core i5-4200U | 10.6 c/B | 15.8 c/B | 20.7 c/B | 30.7 c/B |
| Cortex-A9 (ARMv7) | 24.0 c/B | 33.3 c/B | 44.0 c/B | 53.9 c/B |
| Cortex-A7 (NEON) | 30.7 c/B | 46.5 c/B | ||
| Cortex-A7 (ARMv7) | 41.2 c/B | 57.2 c/B | ||
| ARM1176JZF-S (ARMv6) | 42.9 c/B | 56.8 c/B | 65.3 c/B | 92.2 c/B |
Reference implementation of all AEAD and hash family members.
Note: The pypi package is not maintained by us.
Software
C with Init-Update-Final interface by Matjaž Guštin [git]:
C11 library wrapping the reference C implementation (all AEAD and hash variants), including Init-Update-Final processing and variable tag length.
C/assembly optimized for 32-bit architectures (ESP32/Xtensa, RISC-V) by Ferdinand Bachmann [git]:
C wrapper with assembly optimized for Tensilica Xtensa and 32-bit RISC-V (all AEAD and hash variants).
C optimized for RISC-V by Alexander Ulmer [git]:
RISC-V implementation of Ascon-128 and Ascon-128a
Cython/Python with optional init-update-final interface by Oliver Popa [git]:
Python wrapper with C/Cython implementation (all AEAD and hash variants).
Java by Hannes Groß [git]:
Java implementation of Ascon-128 and Ascon-128a.
Rust by Sebastian Ramacher [git (hash)] [git (AEAD)] [crate (hash)] [crate (AEAD)]:
Rust implementation, as part of the RustCrypto library, of all AEAD and hash variants.
Jasmin by Johannes Erlacher [git]:
Jasmin implementation with a Rust interface (Ascon-128 and Ascon-128a AEAD variants).
Go by Armando Faz [git]:
Go implementation as part of the CIRCL library (all AEAD variants).
TypeScript by Simon Osterlehner [git] [npm]:
Fully typed TypeScript/JavaScript library (all AEAD and hash variants).
Zig by Frank Denis [git]:
Zig implementation as part of the standard library (permutation only).
Hardware
NIST LWC Hardware API reference implementation in VHDL by Robert Primas [git]:
Reference hardware implementations of all AEAD and hash family members by Robert Primas using the NIST LWC Hardware API v1.2.
Simplified Hardware API implementation in Verilog by Robert Primas [git]:
Hardware implementations of the primary variants Ascon-128 and Ascon-Hash by Robert Primas using a simplified interface to reduce the size of the code base.
CAESAR Hardware API reference implementations in VHDL by Hannes Groß [git]:
Reference hardware implementations of Ascon-128 and Ascon-128a by Hannes Groß using the CAESAR Hardware API v1.0. Note that the CAESAR API implies a certain overhead, in particular for lightweight designs like Ascon.
| Design | Area | Throughput |
|---|---|---|
| 1 round | 9420 GE | 4888 Mbps |
| 2 rounds | 12989 GE | 8482 Mbps |
| 3 rounds | 16589 GE | 10343 Mbps |
| 6 rounds | 27280 GE | 12261 Mbps |
Additional: Pre-Processor 869 GE, Post-Processor 1032 GE, HDR Buffer 836 GE
| Design | Area | Throughput |
|---|---|---|
| 1 round | 9680 GE | 7326 Mbps |
| 2 rounds | 13249 GE | 11743 Mbps |
| 4 rounds | 20380 GE | 16675 Mbps |
Additional: Pre-Processor 1491 GE, Post-Processor 1344 GE, HDR Buffer 836 GE
CAESAR Hardware API implementation in VHDL by the Athena project [web]:
Hardware implementation of Ascon-128 and Ascon-128a, including a database of FPGA results for comparison with other CAESAR candidates.
Protected hardware implementation in VHDL by Hannes Groß [git]:
Side-channel protected hardware implementations of Ascon-128 and Ascon-128a by Hannes Groß using domain-oriented masking.
Energy-efficient implementation in VHDL by Michael Fivez [git]:
Energy-efficient implementations of Ascon-128 and Ascon-128a by Michael Fivez, including a comparison with Joltik and MORUS (master’s thesis).
Co-Processor
RISC-V Ascon Accelerator [paper] [git]:
A fast and compact co-processor design for Ascon that can perform AEAD/hashing with a performance of about 2 cycles/byte, or about 4 cycles/byte if protection against fault attacks and power analysis is desired. This co-processor requires only 4.7 kGE, or about half the area of dedicated co-processor designs, and is easy to integrate into low-end embedded devices like 32-bit ARM Cortex-M or RISC-V microprocessors.
| Design | Implementation | 64 B | Runtime 1536 B | long | Codesize |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ascon-128 (-O3) | SW | 164.3 c/B | 110.6 c/B | 108.3 c/B | 11716 B |
| Ascon-Hash (-O3) | SW | 306.9 c/B | 208.0 c/B | 203.8 c/B | 20244 B |
| Ascon128 | SW+Coproc. | 4.2 c/B | 2.2 c/B | 2.1 c/B | 888 B |
| Ascon-Hash | SW+Coproc. | 4.6 c/B | 2.6 c/B | 2.5 c/B | 484 B |
Benchmarks
Athena project’s CAESAR Hardware API benchmarks for FPGA and ASIC [web]:
Benchmarks and tools for hardware implementations. See “Publications” for various related publications.
eBACS/SUPERCOP: ECRYPT Benchmarking of Cryptographic Systems [web]:
Benchmark of software implementations of LWC and CAESAR candidates and other AEAD designs on a wide range of platforms.
Rhys Weatherley’s microcontroller benchmarks (ARM and AVR) [web] [git]:
Benchmark of software implementations of LWC candidates on 8-bit and 32-bit platforms: ARM Cortex M3, ESP32 Arduino, and ATmega2560.
LaS3’s LWC microcontroller benchmarks [web] [git] [talk]:
Benchmark of software implementations of LWC candidates on microcontrollers: Arduino Uno R3, STM32F1 “bluepill”, Espressif ESP32 WROOM, STM32 NUCLEO-F746ZG, Sipeed Maixduino RISC-V 64.
FELICS-AE benchmarks [git]:
Benchmark of LWC candidates based on the FELICS framework.
Ankele & Ankele’s software benchmarks for CAESAR [git] [paper]:
Software benchmarking of 2nd round CAESAR candidates