Intel to Collaborate with Microsoft on DARPA Program - Seite 2

About Democratizing Adoption of Fully Homomorphic Encryption: FHE adoption in the industry has been slow because processing data using fully homomorphic encryption methods on cryptograms is data intensive and incurs a huge “performance tax” even for simple operations.

Under the DARPA DPRIVE program, Intel plans to design an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) accelerator to reduce the performance overhead currently associated with fully homomorphic encryption. When fully realized, 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.

With its expertise in cloud infrastructure, software stacks and fully homomorphic encryption, Microsoft will be a critical partner in accelerating the commercialization of this technology when ready, enabling free data sharing and collaboration while promoting privacy throughout the data life cycle.

“We are pleased to bring our expertise in cloud computing and homomorphic encryption to the DARPA DPRIVE program, collaborating with Intel to advance this transformative technology when ready into commercial usages that will help our customers close the last-mile gap in data confidentiality —– keeping data fully secure and private, whether in storage, transit or use,” said Dr. William Chappell, chief technology officer, Azure Global, and vice president, Mission Systems, Microsoft.

What’s Next: The multiyear DARPA DPRIVE program 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.¹ 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.