It's called trying to inflate the actual performance of your product and/or design knowledge. If your product is good, quote firm numbers based on hard, verifiable FACTS rather than allude to 'improvements' to a mathematical process which has data dependencies which cannot be changed or improved.
The academics who wrote the paper quoted are experts in their field - Dadda has an adder type named after him - and designed a method of reducing delay paths on an actual asic. They did'nt change or say they could change an algorithm. KNC claim to have an 'improved' algorithm, and that is just plain rubbish. Ask any mathematician.
Any respectable company would not make such ridiculous claims, if KNC have indeed used the methods from this paper in their design,then they should acknowledge it. Hence my annoyance.
Incidentally, Dadda and co. got their SHA256 engine to run at 'a clock speed of well over 1Ghz' on a 130nm process.
I'm a mathematician and I think you are splitting hairs. It may not be acceptable in a mathematical journal, but in common usage it is acceptable to me to label an improved algorithm implementation as simply an improved algorithm. Most people don't know the difference and it conveys the idea that they have some special sauce that makes theirs better than a naive implementation.
this is what i already said...