Speaker Series
Talks and invited speakers hosted by Cryptolets
Speaker Series Talk
Speaker: Prof. Ramesh Karri (NYU)
Title: LLM4PQC: LLM-Driven High-Level Synthesis for Post-Quantum Cryptography Hardware
Date: April 1, 2026 @ 3:00 PM EDT
Abstract: Designing hardware accelerators for post-quantum cryptography (PQC) is labor-intensive, with a critical bottleneck being the manual refactoring of NIST PQC reference C code into HLS-ready specifications. We present LLM4PQC, an agentic LLM-based framework that automates this conversion, generating synthesizable HLS C code for complex PQC primitives including NTT accelerators and wide memory interfaces. The framework employs a feedback-driven, hierarchical verification pipeline spanning C compilation, C simulation, and RTL simulation to ensure functional correctness. Preliminary case studies on NIST PQC reference designs — including Kyber, Dilithium, and Falcon — demonstrate significant reductions in manual effort and faster design-space exploration relative to traditional flows. LLM4PQC offers a scalable and efficient pathway for accelerating the hardware realization of next-generation cryptographic standards.