Software Implementation and Comparison of ZUC-256, SNOW-V, and AES-256 on RISC-V Platform

As candidates for cryptographic primitives in 5G communication, ZUC-256, SNOW-V, and AES-256 offer the 256-bit security in terms of confidentiality and integrity. There have been some studies on software implementations on different platforms for them. In this paper, ZUC-256, SNOW-V, and AES-256 are implemented in the standard C language on RISC-V CPU without AES new instructions. Their implementation performances are measured and compared from two aspects including keystream generation and message authentication code generation, and the results suggest that ZUC-256 is faster than SNOW-V and AES-256 algorithms on RISC-V platform.

I. Introduction

As is known to all, 4G system defines three possible algorithms for the data confidentiality and integrity protection, based on three cryptographic primitives such as ZUC [1], SNOW 3G [2], and AES [3] which achieve the 128-bit security. However, 5G system, the next-generation of mobile communication, requests for the greater security and the better performance. The third generation partnership project (3GPP) expects to upgrade the security level to 256 bits [4]. ZUC-256 [5], SNOW-V [6], and AES-256 [3], [7], with 256-bit key lengths, are beginning to receive more and more attention, and they are regarded as potential candidates to protect the confidentiality and integrity in 5G.