In the world of computer security, a breakthrough is planned thanks to the technology of completely homomorphic encryption (Fully Homomorphic Encryption, FHE), which allows the programs to work with encrypted data without deciphering them.
This development opens up prospects for various fields, such as medical research, patient care without disclosing personal data, fighting against money laundering without accessing banking information, and training autonomous cars without compromising drivers’ data.
Previously, FHE was limited due to the need for a million times greater computing efforts compared to working with unencrypted data. However, in 2024, at least six companies are expected to start testing or even commercializing the first chips that accelerate FHE to a level comparable to processing ordinary data.
Todd Austin from the University of Michigan and the founder of AGITA Labs startup notes that this technology violates the basic rule of computer security, as it makes data inaccessible to programmers.
Despite efforts to protect data at the regulatory level, such as the GDPR in Europe or Apple’s App Store Policy, FHE offers an automated solution that enables circumventing legal and regulatory problems while maintaining confidentiality.
FHE is based on cryptography on lattices resistant to quantum calculations. New chips designed to accelerate FHE can process huge amounts of data, performing addition and multiplication operations with numbers consisting of hundreds and thousands of bits.
The development of hardware acceleration for FHE is largely supported by the Darpa project called Dprive. The goal of this project is to reduce the time required for FHE calculations from weeks to seconds. Project participants, including Duality Technologies, Galois, and Intel, plan to introduce chips in 2024. Other companies like Fabric Cryptography and Optalysys also see great prospects in this technology.
FHE development requires not only hardware solutions but also the development of software tools and standardization. Efforts are already underway in this direction, and once the relevant standards and software are developed, researchers will be able to open new horizons in the use of accelerating chips for FHE. Intel believes that FHE will mark a new chapter in the history of computer technology.