[Resource Topic] 2025/611: Proving CPU Executions in Small Space

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Title:
Proving CPU Executions in Small Space

Authors: Vineet Nair, Justin Thaler, Michael Zhu

Abstract:

zkVMs are SNARKs for verifying CPU execution. They allow an untrusted prover to show that it correctly ran a specified program on a witness, where the program is given as bytecode conforming to an instruction set architecture like RISC-V. Existing zkVMs still struggle with high prover resource costs, notably large runtime and memory usage. We show how to implement Jolt—an advanced, sum-check- based zkVM—with a significantly reduced memory footprint, without relying on SNARK recursion, and with only modest runtime overhead (potentially well below a factor of two). We discuss benefits of this approach compared to prevailing recursive techniques.

ePrint: https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/611

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