ICTK, Pukyong team start two new PQC chip projects

ICTK said on November 5, 2026, that it will carry out two follow-up industry-academia cooperation projects with a research team led by Professor Choi Pil-joo of Pukyong National University, focused on public-key and post-quantum cryptography (PQC) hardware engines. The two projects run until August 2028 and bring the total number of joint projects between the company and the research team to four, according to datanet.co.kr.

The third project will focus on improving the stability and practicality of the cryptographic engines developed earlier, covering computation and processing performance, verification of functional errors and security vulnerabilities, and maintainability.

The fourth project aims to develop a programmable quantum-cryptography engine that supports both the international PQC standards and the Korean KpqC standard on a single hardware platform.

ICTK, which mass-produces PQC-capable security chips, plans to apply the jointly developed technology to its products.

Two completed projects

Since September 2024, the security system semiconductor lab at Pukyong National University and ICTK have jointly researched hardware implementations of public-key cryptography and PQC. Over roughly two years, the two sides completed two joint projects: the first developed a hardware cryptographic engine implementing RSA and ECC, and the second developed an integrated engine supporting ML-KEM and ML-DSA on a single piece of hardware.

The research team specializes in lightweight, low-power programmable cryptographic engine design for resource- and power-constrained environments. From 2027, PQC will be reflected in public-sector assessments in Korea, with both international standards and KpqC subject to verification.