phc-discussions - Re: [PHC] Low Argon2 performance in L3 cache

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Date: Sat, 5 Sep 2015 16:40:09 +0300
From: Solar Designer <solar@...nwall.com>
To: discussions@...sword-hashing.net
Subject: Re: [PHC] Low Argon2 performance in L3 cache

On Sat, Sep 05, 2015 at 05:07:39AM -0700, Bill Cox wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 4, 2015 at 5:11 PM, Solar Designer <solar@...nwall.com> wrote:
> > What is it that makes Argon2d so much slower?  Is it needing to perform
> > two BLAKE2b rounds per sub-block, and the intermediate writes to state?
> 
> Mostly 2 things: Too many Blake2 rounds, and having state that does not fit
> into the mmx registers.  Cutting the Blake2 rounds in half looks fairly
> simple, but I don't know what to do about the state variables.

To me, the sequence of two groups of BLAKE2b rounds and thus needing the
intermediate state is an integral part of Argon2's anti-TMTO approach.
Yes, you don't agree those time*depth attacks are important, yet Argon2's
resistance to them is one of its strong sides.

So I don't see a simple way to halve the number of rounds, or it would
be a very different scheme.

What can be done is reusing those intermediate state writes for MAXFORM
S-box updates.  This won't increase the memory filling speed, but it
will improve other properties.

Alexander