Processing of cryptographic hash instruction

A non-transitory computer-readable medium to store computer-readable code for fabrication of an apparatus comprising:

• instruction decoding circuitry to decode a cryptographic hash instruction specifying at least one working operand and an input operand;
• and
• processing circuitry to perform, in response to decoding of the cryptographic hash instruction, a plurality of iterations of a cryptographic hash function, each iteration of the cryptographic hash function comprising determining an updated value for the at least one working operand based on a previous value for the at least one working operand and a respective portion of the input operand selected to be processed in that iteration, the updated value for the at least one working operand in one iteration becoming the previous value for the at least one working operand in a next iteration;
• in which:
• in response to decoding of the cryptographic hash instruction, the processing circuitry is configured to perform at least two iterations of the cryptographic hash function per processing cycle.

A method comprising:

• decoding a cryptographic hash instruction specifying at least one working operand and an input operand;
• and
• performing, in response to decoding of the cryptographic hash instruction, a plurality of iterations of a cryptographic hash function, each iteration of the cryptographic hash function comprising determining an updated value for the at least one working operand based on a previous value for the at least one working operand and a respective portion of the input operand selected to be processed in that iteration, the updated value for the at least one working operand in one iteration becoming the previous value for the at least one working operand in a next iteration;
• in which:
• in response to decoding of the cryptographic hash instruction, processing circuitry performs at least two iterations of the cryptographic hash function per processing cycle.