GCC Patches Pending For RISC-V's Scalar Cryptography Extension

Patches were recently sent out that implement support for RISC-V's Scalar Cryptography Extension within the GNU Compiler Collection.

The RISC-V Scalar Cryptography Extension work recently wrapped up its public review period for the set of instructions proposed for this open-source processor ISA. The set of extensions aim to enhance RISC-V's capabilities for crypto workloads with AES encryption/decryption, SM4 and SM4 cipher instructions, an entropy source extension, bit manipulation instructions for crypto, carry-less multiply, and more.

RISC-V's crypto work is outlined via the extension repo on GitHub where as of last week is up to its "1.0.0-rc6" state.

With the RISC-V Cryptography Extension work getting firmed up and passing the public review period with the "v1.0" milestone imminent, a set of 21 patches were posted for implementing support for the instructions within the GCC compiler.

The patches are under review on the mailing list though given GCC 12 is soon going into its next (bug fixing) stage of development it isn't clear yet if this work will be merged for GCC 12 or postponed to GCC 13. In any case, RISC-V's crypto work is moving forward.