* All my fellow cryptography hobbyists, what's your view on the newly standardized Ascon?

From reading the papers and what was the aim of NIST Lightweight Cryptography competition that it won, I got the impression that it was supposed to be more resilient to side channel attacks, use less memory, execute faster than anything else standardized when run on low end devices. I.e. what we all generally work with. But only go from generally 256 bit keys to 128 bit keys.

But from my testing vs Chacha{8,12,20}Poly1305s it seems that Ascon really only beats Chacha in code size (and that by a lot). Else it's

Ascon vs Chacha

- 128 vs 256 bit keys
- 128 vs 96 bit nonce
- block vs stream cipher
- both don't to table lookup and are mainly xor/rotate based (so better side-channel resistance)

And then execution time for encryption:

```
Ascon128 encrypt
    Runtime (16 bytes) = 9094 cycles/142 us, 568 cycles/byte, 8 us/byte
    Runtime (32 bytes) = 11892 cycles/185 us, 371 cycles/byte, 5 us/byte
    Runtime (64 bytes) = 17464 cycles/272 us, 272 cycles/byte, 4 us/byte
    Runtime (128 bytes) = 28673 cycles/448 us, 224 cycles/byte, 3 us/byte

Ascon128 decrypt
    Runtime (16 bytes) = 9328 cycles/145 us, 583 cycles/byte, 9 us/byte
    Runtime (32 bytes) = 12126 cycles/189 us, 378 cycles/byte, 5 us/byte
    Runtime (64 bytes) = 17729 cycles/277 us, 277 cycles/byte, 4 us/byte
    Runtime (128 bytes) = 28933 cycles/452 us, 226 cycles/byte, 3 us/byte

Chacha8 encrypt
    Runtime (16 bytes) = 7245 cycles/113 us, 452 cycles/byte, 7 us/byte
    Runtime (32 bytes) = 7655 cycles/119 us, 239 cycles/byte, 3 us/byte
    Runtime (64 bytes) = 9245 cycles/144 us, 144 cycles/byte, 2 us/byte
    Runtime (128 bytes) = 13075 cycles/204 us, 102 cycles/byte, 1 us/byte

Chacha8 decrypt
    Runtime (16 bytes) = 7230 cycles/112 us, 451 cycles/byte, 7 us/byte
    Runtime (32 bytes) = 7672 cycles/119 us, 239 cycles/byte, 3 us/byte
    Runtime (64 bytes) = 9414 cycles/147 us, 147 cycles/byte, 2 us/byte
    Runtime (128 bytes) = 13169 cycles/205 us, 102 cycles/byte, 1 us/byte

Chacha12 encrypt
    Runtime (16 bytes) = 7516 cycles/117 us, 469 cycles/byte, 7 us/byte
    Runtime (32 bytes) = 7975 cycles/124 us, 249 cycles/byte, 3 us/byte
    Runtime (64 bytes) = 9511 cycles/148 us, 148 cycles/byte, 2 us/byte
    Runtime (128 bytes) = 13365 cycles/208 us, 104 cycles/byte, 1 us/byte

Chacha12 decrypt
    Runtime (16 bytes) = 7687 cycles/120 us, 480 cycles/byte, 7 us/byte
    Runtime (32 bytes) = 8053 cycles/125 us, 251 cycles/byte, 3 us/byte
    Runtime (64 bytes) = 9675 cycles/151 us, 151 cycles/byte, 2 us/byte
    Runtime (128 bytes) = 13503 cycles/210 us, 105 cycles/byte, 1 us/byte

Chacha20 encrypt
    Runtime (16 bytes) = 8919 cycles/139 us, 557 cycles/byte, 8 us/byte
    Runtime (32 bytes) = 9401 cycles/146 us, 293 cycles/byte, 4 us/byte
    Runtime (64 bytes) = 10950 cycles/171 us, 171 cycles/byte, 2 us/byte
    Runtime (128 bytes) = 15529 cycles/242 us, 121 cycles/byte, 1 us/byte

Chacha20 decrypt
    Runtime (16 bytes) = 9106 cycles/142 us, 569 cycles/byte, 8 us/byte
    Runtime (32 bytes) = 9474 cycles/148 us, 296 cycles/byte, 4 us/byte
    Runtime (64 bytes) = 11049 cycles/172 us, 172 cycles/byte, 2 us/byte
    Runtime (128 bytes) = 15659 cycles/244 us, 122 cycles/byte, 1 us/byte

```

Chacha is ~2x faster than Ascon.