Microsoft and Intel will be working with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) technology
Intel has signed an agreement with Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to perform in its Data Protection in Virtual Environments (DPRIVE) programme, which aims to develop an accelerator for fully homomorphic encryption (FHE).
Microsoft is the key cloud ecosystem and homomorphic encryption partner leading the commercial adoption of the technology once developed by testing it in its cloud offerings, including Microsoft Azure and the Microsoft JEDI cloud, with the US government.
The multi-year programme represents a cross-team effort across multiple Intel groups, including Intel Labs, the Design Engineering Group and the Data Platforms Group, to tackle ‘the final frontier’ in data privacy, which is computing on fully encrypted data without access to decryption keys.
‘Fully homomorphic encryption remains the holy grail in the quest to keep data secure while in use. Despite strong advances in trusted execution environments and other confidential computing technologies to protect data while at rest and in transit, data is unencrypted during computation, opening the possibility of potential attacks at this stage. This frequently inhibits our ability to fully share and extract the maximum value out of data,’ said Rosario Cammarota, principal engineer, Intel Labs, and principal investigator, DARPA DPRIVE programme.
FHE enables users to compute on always-encrypted data or cryptograms. The data never needs to be decrypted, reducing the potential for cyber threats.
Under the DARPA DPRIVE programme, Intel plans to design an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) accelerator to reduce the performance overhead currently associated with fully homomorphic encryption. When fully realised, the accelerator could deliver a massive improvement in executing FHE workloads over existing CPU-driven systems, potentially reducing cryptograms’ processing time by five orders of magnitude.
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With its expertise in cloud infrastructure, software stacks and fully homomorphic encryption, Microsoft will be a critical partner in accelerating the commercialisation of this technology when ready, enabling free data sharing and collaboration while promoting privacy throughout the data life cycle.
The multiyear DARPA DPRIVE programme will span several phases starting with the design, development and verification of foundational IP blocks that will be integrated into a system-on-chip and a full software stack. Throughout the project, Intel will assess progress against pre-established performance targets on artificial intelligence training and inference workloads using homomorphically encrypted data at scale.
Beyond the development of the core technologies needed for the design of the accelerator, Intel and Microsoft will work with international standards bodies to develop international standards for FHE. Intel will also continue to invest in ongoing academic research in the field.
