SHA instruction set

A SHA instruction set is a set of extensions to the x86 and ARM instruction set architecture which support hardware acceleration of Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA) family. It was specified in 2013 by Intel. Instructions for SHA-512 was introduced in Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake in 2024.

The original SSE-based extensions added four instructions supporting SHA-1 and three for SHA-256.

• SHA-1: SHA1RNDS4, SHA1NEXTE, SHA1MSG1, SHA1MSG2
• SHA-256: SHA256RNDS2, SHA256MSG1, SHA256MSG2

The newer SHA-512 instruction set comprises AVX-based versions of the original SHA instruction set marked with a V prefix and these three new AVX-based instructions for SHA-512:

• VSHA512RNDS2, VSHA512MSG1, VSHA512MSG2

All recent AMD processors support the original SHA instruction set:

• AMD Zen (2017) and later processors.

The following Intel processors support the original SHA instruction set:

• Intel Goldmont (2016) and later Atom microarchitecture processors.
• Intel Cannon Lake (2018/2019), Ice Lake (2019) and later processors for laptops ("mainstream mobile").
• Intel Rocket Lake (2021) and later processors for desktop computers.

The following Intel processors will support the newer SHA-512 instruction set:

• Intel Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake processors.

• Chapter 8 of"Intel Architecture Instruction Set Extensions Programming Reference" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-09-29.