Software Benchmarking of NIST Lightweight Hash Function Finalists on Resource-Constrained AVR Platform via ChipWhisperer

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Mohsin Khan, Håvard D. Johansen, Dag Johansen

Published: 2025, Last Modified: 04 Nov 2025SECRYPT 2025EveryoneRevisionsBibTeXCC BY-SA 4.0
Abstract: This paper presents a novel performance evaluation of five key lightweight hash functions on an ATxmega128 microcontroller, using our E-RANK metric as a composite metric that integrates execution speed, memory footprint, and energy efficiency into a unified and balanced ranking. We leverage hardware-specific profiling techniques, where counter registers are accessed directly on the microcontroller to measure execution speed and analyze RAM and ROM footprints post-compilation to determine memory usage. Energy consumption is measured using the ChipWhisperer FPGA toolkit, capturing voltage traces via an oscilloscope probe. Our evaluations provide new insights into the trade-offs inherent in each lightweight hash function, providing guidance on which one is most suitable for various application-specific constraints.