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.^[1] Instructions for SHA-512 was introduced in Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake in 2024.

x86 architecture processors

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

AMD

All recent AMD processors support the original SHA instruction set:

• AMD Zen^[2] (2017) and later processors.

Intel

The following Intel processors support the original SHA instruction set:

• Intel Goldmont^[3] (2016) and later Atom microarchitecture processors.
• Intel Cannon Lake^[4] (2018/2019), Ice Lake^[5] (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.