zkDuel: Characterizing SumCheck Prover Kernels across GPU Programming Models

arXiv:2610.37710v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: SumCheck is a central prover primitive in zero-knowledge proofs, exposing table-parallel work that maps naturally to GPUs but becomes increasingly arithmetic-intensive as finite fields widen. We study how this shift affects the cost of programming SumCheck in Triton rather than CUDA. Our benchmark, zkDuel, provides matched implementations of 25 zkPHIRE-derived constraints alongside diagnostic polynomials, covering 32-, 64-, 128-, and 256-bit prime fields, with independent CPU-reference validation and cross-backend checksum gating. Of 800 configurations attempted on an NVIDIA H100, 758 complete with matching checksums.