May 2026
Zenodo
Zero-Knowledge
ZK IR: A Minimalist Instruction Set Architecture for Efficient Zero-Knowledge Proof Generation
32-bit Design for STARK-Based Proving
Antoine Mercier, Vojtěch Šimek, Mamone Tarsia
A specialized 32-bit instruction set architecture tailored for zero-knowledge proof generation with STARK protocols. Demonstrates that a pure 32-bit register design using software-based multi-precision arithmetic achieves approximately 2× reduction in constraint count compared to naive approaches.
Keywords: 32-bit ISA, STARK Protocols, LLVM Toolchain