Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems 2025
TFHE Gets Real:
an Efficient and Flexible Homomorphic Floating-Point Arithmetic
Loris Bergerat
Zama, Paris, France; Université Caen Normandie, ENSICAEN, CNRS, Normandie Univ, GREYC UMR 6072, F-14000 Caen, France
Ilaria Chillotti
Damien Ligier
Jean-Baptiste Orfila
Zama, Paris, France
Samuel Tap
Zama, Paris, France
Keywords: Homomorphic Encryption, TFHE, Floating-Point
Abstract
Floating-point arithmetic plays a central role in computer science and is used in various domains where precision and computational scale are essential. One notable application is in machine learning, where Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) can play a crucial role in safeguarding user privacy. In this paper, we focus on TFHE and develop novel homomorphic operators designed to enable the construction of precise and adaptable homomorphic floating-point operations. Integrating floating-point arithmetic within the context of FHE is particularly challenging due to constraints such as small message space and the lack of information during computation. Despite these challenges, we were able to determine parameters for common precisions (e.g., 32-bit, 64-bit) and achieve remarkable computational speeds, with 32-bit floating-point additions completing in 2.5 seconds and multiplications in approximately 1 second in a multi-threaded environment. These metrics provide empirical evidence of the efficiency and practicality of our proposed methods, which significantly outperform previous efforts. Our results demonstrate a significant advancement in the practical application of FHE, making it more viable for real-world scenarios and bridging the gap between theoretical encryption techniques and practical usability.
Publication
IACR Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems, Volume 2025, Issue 2
PaperArtifact
Artifact number
tches/2025/a16
Artifact published
July 18, 2025
Badge
✅ IACR CHES Artifacts Functional
Note that license information is supplied by the authors and has not been confirmed by the IACR.
BibTeX How to cite
Loris Bergerat, Ilaria Chillotti, Damien Ligier, Jean-Baptiste Orfila, Samuel Tap. (2025). TFHE Gets Real: an Efficient and Flexible Homomorphic Floating-Point Arithmetic. IACR Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems, 2025(2), 126–162. https://doi.org/10.46586/tches.v2025.i2.126-162. Artifact at https://artifacts.iacr.org/tches/2025/a16.