A chain Merkle signature encryption processor arch
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Application background One-time signature schemes rely on hash functions and are, therefore, assumed to be resistant to attacks
by quantum computers. These approaches inherently raise a key management problem, as the key pair
can be used only for one message. That means, for one-time signature schemes to work, the sender must
deliver the verification key together with the message and the signature. Upon reception, the receiver has
to verify the authenticity of the verification key before verifying the signature itself. Hash-tree based
solutions tackle this problem by basing the authenticity of a large number of verification keys on the
authenticity of a root key. This approach, however, causes computation, communication, and storage
overhead. Due to hardware acceleration, this paper proposes, for the first time, a processor architecture
which boosts the performance of a one-time signature scheme without degradi