General information

palisade-wasm is the official web-assembly port of the PALISADE homomorphic library. palisade-wasm supports all homomorphic encryption schemes supported by PALISADE and exposes an API similar to the C++ API for PALISADE.

All versions of PALISADE starting with v1.11.3 are supported.

palisade-wasm is licensed under the BSD-3 license.

Notes specific to palisade-wasm

• The palisade-wasm port is somewhat slower than the C++ version of PALISADE due to a normal slowdown incurred in web assembly builds (typically 2x) and additional slow-down due to the use of 64-bit arithmetic in PALISADE (64-bit arithmetic is emulated in WASM).
• We optimized palisade-wasm for BGVrns, CKKS, and FHEW schemes. The users should typically expect a slowdown of 2x-3x as compared to clang builds and about 4x-5x as compared to gcc builds.
• We did not optimize BFVrns and BFVrnsB. So a more significant slowdown is expected for some operations in these schemes, specifically the homomorphic multplication. We recommend using BGVrns instead of BFVrns and BFVrnsB in use cases where homomorphic computations using palisade-wasm need to be performed. In scenarios where only client operations, i.e., key generation, encryption, and decryption, are needed, either scheme can be used.
• Web assembly running environment is typically limited to 4GB of RAM.
• palisade-wasm does not currently support multi-threading.

Examples

palisade-wasm comes with the following examples, which are the JS versions of selected C++ PALISADE examples:

• boolean.js: shows an example of Boolean circuit evaluation using FHEW (in the TFHE/GINX mode)
• boolean_serial_binary.js: shows an example with serialization/deserialization of Boolean circuit evaluation using FHEW (in the TFHE/GINX mode)
• pre_buffer.js: demonstrates use of PALISADE for encryption, proxy re-encryption and decryption of packed vector of binary data
• simple_integer.js: simple example showing homomorphic additions, multiplications, and rotations for vectors of integers using BFVrns
• simple_integer_bgvrns.js: simple example showing homomorphic additions, multiplications, and rotations for vectors of integers using BGVrns
• simple_integer_serial_buffer.js: simple example showing typical serialization/deserialization calls for a prototype computing homomorphic additions, multiplications, and rotations for vectors of integers using BFVrns
• simple_real_numbers.js: simple example showing homomorphic additions, multiplications, and rotations for vectors of real numbers using CKKS
• threshold_fhe.js: shows several examples of threshold FHE in BGVrns, BFVrns, and CKKS

Build instructions from source

1. Install emscripten using the instructions at https://emscripten.org/docs/getting_started/downloads.html.
2. Install NodeJs if not already installed.
3. Clone PALISADE either from https://gitlab.com/palisade/palisade-development or https://gitlab.com/palisade/palisade-release.
4. Cd to the PALISADE folder (either palisade-development or palisade-release) and create embuild directory.
5. Run

export PREFIX=~/install/location
mkdir embuild
cd embuild
emcmake cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=${PREFIX}
emmake make -jN

Where N is number of cores available. to do the cmake configuration. Here, ~/install/location can be replaced with any empty directory at the desired location where palisade binaries should be installed.

6. Run

emmake make install

to install the binaries in the desired location.

To include the unit tests, examples, or benchmarks, the corresponding cmake flags can be set to "ON" instead of "OFF".

7. Clone the palisade-wasm repository and cd to palisade-wasm.

8. Run the following commands to build the NodeJS bindings.

mkdir build
cd build
emcmake cmake .. -DPalisade_DIR=${PREFIX}/lib/Palisade
emmake make

This should install emscripten libraries in palisade-wasm/lib directory.

9. Now run the examples in the following directories using nodejs

• examples/js/binfhe/
• examples/js/pke/

Running web-assembly unit tests

Compile PALISADE in the embuild directory using the following CMake flags

emcmake cmake .. -DBUILD_UNITTESTS=ON -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=~/install/location

Run unit tests using nodejs:

nodejs unittest/binfhe_tests.js
nodejs unittest/pke_tests.js

Running web-assembly benchmarks

Compile PALISADE in the embuild directory using the following CMake flags

emcmake cmake .. -DBUILD_BENCHMARKS=ON -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=~/install/location

Run benchmarks using nodejs, e.g.,

nodejs benchmark/lib-benchmark.js

Typescript Development

For usage examples, we would like to test our code using the same import syntax as any other user. To achieve this, run npm link followed by npm link palisade-crypto.

Building

To build the distributed package, run npm run build_package followed by npm pack