Review

A survey of post-quantum cryptographic chips: Current status, challenges, and future directions

¹ School of Integrated Circuits, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
² State Key Laboratory of Cryptography and Digital Economy Security, Beijing 100084, China

^* Corresponding author (email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. )

Received: 29 October 2025
Revised: 29 December 2025
Accepted: 6 January 2026

Abstract

The development of quantum computing poses a serious threat to traditional cryptographic systems and has driven the rapid development of post-quantum cryptography (PQC). Specialized hardware solutions, especially PQC chips, are considered a key to achieving secure and efficient migration of quantum cryptography. This review first introduces the relevant background and the main PQC schemes and then focuses on analyzing the design challenges and bottlenecks faced by the design of PQC chips. Next, the development status and unresolved issues of different technologies, such as Central Processing Unit (CPU) Instruction-Set Extension (ISE), Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC), and Domain-Specific Accelerators (DSA), are further organized and analyzed. Finally, on the basis of specific application requirements, the future development technology path of PQC chips is discussed.