On 21/10/2009, at 20.28, Marcel Keller wrote:
Martin Geisler wrote:
Janus Dam Nielsen <janus.niel...@alexandra.dk> writes:
Hi Marcel,

I am not opposed to your suggestion. However I would like to point out
that in VIFF you compute on shares and not field elements!
Well, we've actually made the outer runtime interfaces in such a way
that add, mul, xor, etc... accept both integers, FieldElements and
Shares. The methods then wrap their input as needed -- or they *dont*
wrap it if that leads to a short cut (e.g., constant multiplication)

I agree (see also my answer).
I would still like to stress that Shares are the basic values in VIFF. The interface is then designed in such a way, so that we can do various optimizations, but computing on field elements (a particular representation of a share) is an optimization, which I am very happy that the interface allows us to do. But it is still an optimization.

Computing directly on the field elements is hacking the abstractions
of VIFF. Computation on field elements or rather the representation of
a Share can be useful as an optimization, however this optimization
should be confined within applications or runtimes, and should not
progress over interface boundaries as I fear you are suggesting.
I think we are in agreement: public methods on the runtimes will keep
returning Shares. Methods used internally in runtimes can return other
things as needed. To me it sounds like a better API to require
preprocessing functions to return a list of Deferreds:
 [D(?), D(?), ...],
instead of a Deferred list of tuples containing Deferreds :-)
I think it will simplify the interface nicely, at least for consumers. Using simpler types also leads to less memory usage which has a positive
effect on performance, as Marcel notes. So let's go for it.

So this makes 2 votes in favour of it and 1 against it. Maybe we should have a meeting to discuss it. What do you think?
I can agree on this as well, as long as we don't make field elements canonical.

____________________________________________________

Janus Dam Nielsen

Research and Innovationspecialist, PhD.
CENTRE FOR IT-SECURITY

THE ALEXANDRA INSTITUTE LTD.

T +45 42 22 93 56
E janus.niel...@alexandra.dk
W alexandra.dk
____________________________________________________

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