750.sealcrypto_r
SPEC CPU®2026 Benchmark Description

Benchmark Name

750.sealcrypto_r

Benchmark Program General Category

Security and privacy - Homomorphically Encrypted (HE) query

Benchmark Authors

Benchmark Description

Homomorphic Encryption (HE) is a form of encryption that permits users to perform computations on its encrypted data without first decrypting it.

Privacy preserving search is a common scenario to demonstrate the benefits of homomorphic encryption. Being able to perform a query while preserving the privacy and confidentiality of the parameters of the query has many applications across various industry segments spanning from genomics to finance.

This application implements a database lookup in which both the database and query are encrypted during the entire lookup. The secure query example implements a simple secure database query using the Brakerski/Fan-Vercauteren scheme (BFV) available in the open-source Microsoft library called SEAL, which stands for Simple Encrypted Arithmetic Library. SEAL facilitates building end-to-end homomorphically encrypted data storage and computation services, and is the foundation of this benchmark.

The application consists of 2 component classes and a main file.

SQClient implements basic client functionality including initializing the encryption context, key generation, and encrypting and decrypting database queries.
SQServer stores the encrypted database and implements the encrypted database query algorithm.
Main.cpp: A program which creates an instance of SQClient with either default or user specified encryption parameters. An instance of SQServer is then also initialized with the chosen parameters. Next the application reads in a set of key/value pairs from a user specified CSV file and encrypts them using the HE context. The user enters a search key and the results of the search is then displayed. The communication happens all between classes in a single process; there is no interprocess communication.

Input Description

The default options are set to allow the application to work well with the current dataset. It uses the following parameters by default:

Polymodulus degree: 8192
Plain Modulus: 17
Key length: 8 characters

The Input database is a key-value store pre-populated with provinces/states and their capital cities. There are three different input files used (refrate, train, and test) with varying number of entries to provide three different sizes for the benchmark. Each entry consists of key:value (state name : Capital name) with its first letter capitalized. The contents of the input file used in refrate (ecuador_province_capitals_refrate.csv) is the following:

        Azuay,Cuenca
        Bolivar,Guaranda
        Canar,Azogues
        Carchi,Tulcan
        Chimborazo,Riobamba
        Cotopaxi,Latacunga
        El Oro,Machala
        Esmeraldas,Esmeraldas
        Galapagos,Puerto Baquerizo Moreno
        Guayas,Guayaquil
        Imbabura,Ibarra
        Loja,Loja
        Los Rios,Babahoyo
        Manabi,Portoviejo
        Morona Santiago,Macas
        Napo,Tena
        Orellana,Puerto Francisco de Orellana
        Pastaza,Puyo
        Pichincha,Quito
        Santa Elena,Santa Elena
        Santo Domingo de los Tsachilas,Santo Domingo
        Sucumbios,Nueva Loja
        Tungurahua,Ambato
        Zamora Chinchipe,Zamora
        Ecuador,Quito

Output Description

For a successful execution, the output of the query is the expected value of the key that was inserted in the database. For example, in refrate, the input query is 'Galapagos' and the expected value that represents the capital of the Ecuatorian province is 'Puerto Baquerizo Moreno'

        run_refrate:
        SEAL BFV context initialized with following parameters
        Polymodulus degree: 8192
        Plain modulus: 17
        Key length: 8
        Number of database entries: 25
        Encrypting database entries into Ciphertexts
        Querying database for key: Galapagos
        Decoded database entry: Puerto Baquerizo Moreno

Programming Language

C, C++

Threading Model

The benchmark is single-threaded.

Known Portability Issues

None.

Sources and Licensing

SEAL source can be found under: github.com/microsoft/SEAL. The SPEC CPU sources began with version: 4.0.0 (commit hash a0fc0b7) on Mar 17, 2022.

SEAL is distributed under the MIT License.

Secure Query is derived from the github repository faberga/he-toolkit (which appears to no longer be available when checked March 2026). The SPEC CPU sources began 24 August 2022 using commit/ad7b83892f7d971da2fbd7c88b3507372ad7a0de from location faberga/he-toolkit/tree/main/he-samples/examples/secure-query.
This database lookup example is a derived port of the BGV Country Lookup example code that ships with HElib.
This country lookup example is derived from an earlier BGV database demo code originally written by Jack Crawford for a lunch and learn session at IBM Research (Hursley) in 2019. The original demo code ships with HElib and can be found here

Secure Query is distributed under the Apache License 2.0 license.

SPEC added a version of the Mersenne-Twister PRNG that is licensed by its authors (Makoto Matsumoto, Takuji Nishimura, and Mutsuo Saito) under a BSD license.

spec_random_distributions.h is sampled from the LLVM project, which is distributed under the Apache License v2.0 with LLVM Exceptions.

References

Microsoft SEAL library
H.Chen, K.Laine, R.Player, Simple Encrypted Arithmetic Library - SEAL v2.1, Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2017/224, 2017. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-70278-0_1. local copy: [pdf].

750.sealcrypto_r SPEC CPU®2026 Benchmark Description