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Re:Show HN: ArcaneVM – A Fully Homomorphic Encryption Brainf... by saagarjha on Thursday December 19, 2019 @07:11PM (#21840610)
Ooh, I didn't realize fully homomorphic encryption was possible! I presume that this can theoretically run arbitrary programs?
Re:Show HN: ArcaneVM – A Fully Homomorphic Encryption Brainf... by betterunix2 on Thursday December 19, 2019 @07:23PM (#21840694)
Arbitrary programs that terminate on every input (no infinite loops), and with a few important caveats:

1. Random access (reading input-dependent memory address) must be simulated with linear scans of the array.

2. Input-dependent branches must be transformed as follows: both branches are evaluated, and the side effects must be combined using the branch condition (e.g. x <- xc + new_x(1-c)).

3. Loops with input-dependent bounds must be unrolled to their maximum number of iterations (this is not always easy to compute).

In general you would probably write your programs in a special-purpose language that is easy to compile for this model of computation. Efficiency can suffer for some algorithms -- sorting winds up being O(n lg^2 n) instead of O(n lg n), for example.

Also the best FHE schemes are still nowhere near practical for the majority of computations people care about.

Re:Show HN: ArcaneVM – A Fully Homomorphic Encryption Brainf... by plerpin on Friday December 20, 2019 @12:00AM (#21841806)
I didn't realize HE was still so primitive. Whenever there is a privacy kerfulffle for thing X, HN commenters say "X should be implemented with homomorphic encryption instead!"

LOL

Re:Show HN: ArcaneVM – A Fully Homomorphic Encryption Brainf... by saagarjha on Thursday December 19, 2019 @10:29PM (#21841513)
So arbitrary Turing-complete programs have not been figured out yet, I take it?