BipBipCache: Pipeline-Aware Integration of Low-Latency Tweakable Encryption in an Embedded Cache Controller

Computer Science > Cryptography and Security [Submitted on 22 Jun 2026] BipBipCache: Pipeline-Aware Integration of Low-Latency Tweakable Encryption in an Embedded Cache Controller Corbin Hibler, Firas Hassan, Eric McKanna Consumer and embedded processors store sensitive data in on-chip SRAM caches that remain readable after power loss or physical probing unless ciphertext is maintained in the memory array itself. This paper presents BipBipCache, a direct-mapped cache controller that integrates the BipBip tweakable block cipher (TBC) to encrypt cache data and tags in real time using a C^3-style 24+40 bit decomposition of each 64-bit word. We reconstruct the first pipelined hardware BipBip encryptor from a decryptor-centric specification and coordinate it with a 3-cycle decryptor inside the cache datapath. Our threat model targets confidentiality of cache-resident contents against cold-boot, bus, and SRAM readout attacks. A key architectural result is that 6-cycle encryption latency does not fully translate into 6-cycle write penalty: the first three encryptor stages overlap with tag decryption and hit detection, leaving an effective 3-cycle write commitment after hit verification. We verify encryptor and decryptor correctness against the official BipBip C++ reference (five vectors each), report FPGA resource utilization on Xilinx Artix-7 (3,356 LUTs, 16.1% of device; crypto logic ~79% of LUTs), and confirm end-to-end operation on hardware. Comments: 8 pages, 3 figures Subjects: Cryptography and Security (cs.CR) ACM classes: E.3; B.3.2 Cite as: arXiv:2606.23941 [cs.CR]   (or arXiv:2606.23941v1 [cs.CR] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.23941 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Corbin Hibler [view email] [v1] Mon, 22 Jun 2026 21:03:38 UTC (7,095 KB) Access Paper: view license Current browse context: cs.CR < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-06 Change to browse by: cs References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)