tech/C

• Essay
  Weenix 21 April 2026

  Full Unix-like kernel in ~7,000 lines of C, written for Brown CS 169 (Operating Systems with Lab): virtual memory, VFS, system calls, threading, device drivers and interrupt handlers, and file systems. Custom linker support for running userspace x86-64 ELF binaries.

• Essay
  Where Does SIMD Help Post-Quantum Cryptography? A Micro-Architectural Study of ML-KEM on x86 AVX2 4 April 2026

  We systematically decompose the sources of SIMD speedup for ML-KEM (Kyber) on Intel x86-64 AVX2. By benchmarking four compilation variants, we demonstrate that GCC’s auto-vectorizer provides negligible benefit, and that hand-written AVX2 assembly delivers a $35\times$–$56\times$ performance increase for core arithmetic operations. This drives an end-to-end KEM speedup of $5.4\times$–$7.1\times$.

  researchresearch/cryptographyresearch/hpcresearch/compilersresearch/systemstech/hpctech/asm