Cryptolets

Open-source cryptographic hardware for secure computing

Cryptolets is an open-source research program building reusable hardware blocks, design tools, and a community around cryptographic computing.

Modern privacy-preserving systems, including zero-knowledge proofs, fully homomorphic encryption, and post-quantum cryptography, need fast and trustworthy hardware. Cryptolets develops a shared hardware repository and supporting workflows so researchers and builders can explore cryptographic accelerators from modular arithmetic primitives through larger chiplet-scale systems.

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Follow the code, join the mailing list, or catch up on talks and tutorials from the Cryptolets community.

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Program Overview

Cryptolets brings together open-source hardware IP, automated design-space exploration, and community education for cryptographic acceleration. The project is rooted in the NSF-supported Cryptolets program and is organized around practical, inspectable artifacts: source code, tutorials, talks, and reproducible design flows.

The public repository includes infrastructure for cryptographic hardware modules, including primitive building blocks, modular operations, design sweeps, Tcl cores, and analysis utilities.

Open Hardware IP

Reusable cryptographic building blocks for modular arithmetic, point operations, NTT-style kernels, and related accelerator components.

Design Exploration

Scripts and sweep flows for comparing architecture choices across performance, area, implementation targets, and design constraints.

Verification

A focus on correctness and reproducibility, connecting cryptographic hardware generation with testing, analysis, and future formal methods.

Community

Talks, tutorials, workshops, and shared resources for researchers working on cryptographic hardware and secure computing systems.

What We Are Building

  • An open repository for cryptographic hardware modules and reusable implementation flows.
  • Hardware components that support proof systems, post-quantum cryptography, and privacy-preserving computation.
  • Design-space exploration tools for evaluating accelerators across FPGA and ASIC-oriented workflows.
  • Community resources that make cryptographic hardware easier to learn, reproduce, and extend.

Reference

Cryptolets was originally supported through NSF Award.