SPECT Compiler

July 10, 2025 ยท View on GitHub

This repository presents SPECT, a domain specific processor designed for performing calculations related to Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). SPECT offers dedicated instructions for operations involving 256-bit numbers and modular arithmetic, making it useful for implementing algorithms like:

  • ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm)
  • ECDH (Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman).

Documentation

Programmer's Guide

ISA (Instruction Set Architecture):

  • v0.1
  • v0.2 - Used in production TROPIC01 devices

Dependencies

The ts-spect-compiler has following dependencies:

  • cmake
  • C++ compiler
  • Python3.8 (or higher)
  • Xlstproc
  • jinja2 python package

To install the dependencies:

sudo apt-get install cmake build-essentials python3 python3-pip xsltproc

Then, to install jinja2:

pip install jinja2

Build Instructions

Follow these steps to build SPECT from source with CMake:

  1. Clone the Repository:

    First, recursively clone the SPECT repository to your local machine:

    git clone https://github.com/tropicsquare/ts-spect-compiler.git --recurse-submodules
cd ts-spect-compiler  # Navigate to the repository directory

  2. Build SPECT:

    Use the provided build.sh script to build SPECT with CMake:

    ./build.sh --clean

    This script will compile SPECT and generate binaries for the compiler spect_compiler and the instruction set simulator spect_iss in the default build directory, which is build/src/apps.

  3. Make the Binaries Executable (Optional):

    If necessary, make the generated binaries executable as follows:

    chmod +x build/src/apps/spect_compiler
chmod +x build/src/apps/spect_iss

  4. Optional: Add Binaries to $PATH (Convenient Access):

    To easily access these binaries from anywhere, you can add their directory to your system's $PATH:

    export PATH="${PATH}:$(pwd)/build/src/apps/"

    You can also add this line to your shell configuration file (e.g., ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc) to make the changes persistent.

  5. Run the Binaries:

    Finally, you can run the SPECT compiler and instruction set simulator using the following commands:

    spect_compiler --help
spect_iss --help

Contribution and Pull Requests

We appreciate your interest in contributing to the SPECT compiler! Currently, we are not accepting pull requests.