Dear Dr. Waris,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 28 2025 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org . When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols . Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols .

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Muhammad E. S. Elrabaa

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

1.Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

2. Please note that PLOS ONE has specific guidelines on code sharing for submissions in which author-generated code underpins the findings in the manuscript. In these cases, we expect all author-generated code to be made available without restrictions upon publication of the work. Please review our guidelines at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/materials-and-software-sharing#loc-sharing-code and ensure that your code is shared in a way that follows best practice and facilitates reproducibility and reuse.

3. When completing the data availability statement of the submission form, you indicated that you will make your data available on acceptance. We strongly recommend all authors decide on a data sharing plan before acceptance, as the process can be lengthy and hold up publication timelines. Please note that, though access restrictions are acceptable now, your entire data will need to be made freely accessible if your manuscript is accepted for publication. This policy applies to all data except where public deposition would breach compliance with the protocol approved by your research ethics board. If you are unable to adhere to our open data policy, please kindly revise your statement to explain your reasoning and we will seek the editor's input on an exemption. Please be assured that, once you have provided your new statement, the assessment of your exemption will not hold up the peer review process.

4. If the reviewer comments include a recommendation to cite specific previously published works, please review and evaluate these publications to determine whether they are relevant and should be cited. There is no requirement to cite these works unless the editor has indicated otherwise. 

Additional Editor Comments:

Please take into account all the reviewers' comments when revising the manuscript and prepare a detailed list of changes with the revised submission.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? -->?>

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available??>

The PLOS Data policy

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

**********

4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English??>

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

Reviewer #1: This article presents a pipelined and conflict-free NTT accelerator for CRYSTALS Kyber on an FPGA platform. It employed several architectural optimizations, including pipelining, resource sharing, and algorithmic optimizations like the multiplier-less Montgomery reduction algorithm. However, the following concerns need to be addressed:

1. Table II is not complete; add results for throughput per unit area, like throughput per slice. Also comment on the power consumption of the design.

2. References are used in a very strange manner, like (1) and (2). This representation is used for equations, not for references.

3. A lot of typos and grammatical mistakes; it is advised to proofread the manuscript very carefully. In addition, a few lines of paragraphs are not recommended, so reduce the number of paragraphs by increasing their sizes.

4. The authors must explain whether it is in-place NTT or any other form. How many BRAMs are used to store the polynomial coefficients, and is it for a single polynomial?

5. The authors didn’t mention their previous work, ‘Area-time efficient pipelined number theoretic transform for CRYSTALS-Kyber’, is there any good reason?

6. Provide your modular multiplier, butterfly unit results, and compare them with: (1) ‘efficient reconfigurable modular multipliers for post-quantum digital signatures’, and (2) ‘efficient soft-core multipliers for digital signatures’. Add this comparison to the manuscript.

7. Some recent work must be added and compared in Table 2, such as (1) Efficient Number Theoretic Transform Architecture for CRYSTALS-Kyber, etc.

8. Most of the schemes are now hybrid, so how will your design scale in a multi-scheme environment where lattice and hash-based schemes are integrated?

9. Power consumption is very important; add power consumption stats and compare them with the listed designs.

10. Side-channel attacks are very important nowadays. How robust is your design against these attacks (power and timing)?

Reviewer #2: This paper presents a new pipelined hardware implementation of NTT for Kyber on FPGAs which provides significant improvement in ATP.

I have to following comments to improve the quality of the manuscript.

1. When a new implementation is proposed it must be analyzed from side-channel aspects. It is suggested that the authors explain the potential side-channel leakages of their architecture (e.g., timing, power)?

If there are any, do they have considered any potential countermeasures (e.g., constant-time logic, masking, etc.)?

2. It is beneficial to add a discussion and explain the challenges of adopting the proposed approach to other LWE schemes that use NTT such as Dilithium.

3. Please also add power and energy metrics of your design.

4. Please mention the synthesis and implementation settings that you used on Vivado.

Also, there are several typos and errors throughout the manuscript. Please proofread the whole manuscript several times. The following are some of these issues I noticed.

5. Picture qualities are bad especially when zoomed. It is suggested that the authors import the pdf file of their figures instead of jpeg, png, etc.

6. Eq 1??

7. CRYSTALs must be CRYSTALS

8. (8),when (no space)

9. [52]

10. Analysis show(s)

11. An acronym must be defined only once when it is used for the first time. From there it must be redefined again. Do this to all the acronyms you use, including ENS.

Overall, I believe the paper has merits, but it requires substantial edits before being ready for publication.

**********

what does this mean? ). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

**********

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/ . PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org . Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Pipelined and Conflict-Free Number Theoretic Transform Accelerator for CRYSTALS-Kyber on FPGA

PONE-D-25-24864R1

Dear Dr. Waris,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

An invoice will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager®  and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. For questions related to billing, please contact billing support .

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Muhammad E. S. Elrabaa

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewer #1:

Reviewer #2:

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

**********

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions??>

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? -->?>

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available??>

The PLOS Data policy

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English??>

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: I have no more comments. But it is highly encouraged that the authors publish their codes to be used by others.

**********

what does this mean? ). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

**********