SumcheckPIM: An Efficient HBM-Based PIM Architecture for Linear Complexity Zero Knowledge Proofs

Abstract

Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) are emerging as a core technology for privacy-preserving computation. Despite steady progress in protocol and algorithm design, generating these proofs remains computationally intensive, driving growing interest in hardware acceleration for kernels such as number-theoretic transform (NTT) and multi-scalar multiplication (MSM). Among them, the sumcheck protocol offers a compelling alternative with O(n) prover complexity compared to O(nlog n) for NTT-based approaches, yet our analysis reveals its execution is fundamentally memory-bound, with severely underutilized compute resources. This characteristic demands a memory-centric acceleration strategy, in contrast to compute-centric approaches of prior work.