HW Crypto Engine support in new SDK

Max,

Yes.  The Sitara Linux SDK 05.05.00.00 will have support for the crypto HW using cryptoapi and an OCF wrapper.  Our example applications use openssl as shipped in the SDK to utilize the crypto accelerators.

Chase

Chase, that's a good news, thanks.

Do you know if SDK 05.05.00.00 will be released as expected (today, accordingly to SDG wiki page), or if its delivery date has been postponed? It is expected to be based on PSP 04.06.00.08 but I cannot see any 4.6.0.8 tag or branch on git repo, nor any commit related to OCF and crypto driver into staging development branch.

It would be really important for our planning to know something more on the real delivery date.

Thanks one more. Best regards,

Max

Max,

The release has been pushed to July 15th at the earliest.  I will update the wiki.

Chase

Chase,

Thanks for your answer: unfortunately I've seen the release as already moved to July the 31st (as scheduled date...) :(

In the meanwhile I'm looking at patches by Greg Turner that you have committed to Arago project: I've found them here. I've patched PSP 04.06.00.07 kernel, and it seems fine, then I've tried to run some tests, with "cryptotest" and "openssl speed" tools. Just to summarize the main result, I'm obtaining very poor performances with small size blocks:

cryptotest -a aes256 200 16 64 256 1024 8192
   0.021 sec,     400 aes256 crypts,      16 bytes,   309777 byte/sec,     2.4 Mb/sec
   0.021 sec,     400 aes256 crypts,      64 bytes,  1233616 byte/sec,     9.4 Mb/sec
   0.023 sec,     400 aes256 crypts,     256 bytes,  4497936 byte/sec,    34.3 Mb/sec
   0.036 sec,     400 aes256 crypts,    1024 bytes, 11461831 byte/sec,    87.4 Mb/sec
   0.127 sec,     400 aes256 crypts,    8192 bytes, 25829642 byte/sec,   197.1 Mb/sec

openssl speed -evp aes-256-cbc -engine cryptodev
Doing aes-256-cbc for 3s on 16 size blocks: 55485 aes-256-cbc's in 0.05s
Doing aes-256-cbc for 3s on 64 size blocks: 55675 aes-256-cbc's in 0.05s
Doing aes-256-cbc for 3s on 256 size blocks: 50666 aes-256-cbc's in 0.06s
Doing aes-256-cbc for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 32663 aes-256-cbc's in 0.04s
Doing aes-256-cbc for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 9434 aes-256-cbc's in 0.02s

While without the patches (so with no hw accelerator) I obtain always approx 55-65 Mbps for all sizes:

openssl speed aes-256-cbc
Doing aes-256 cbc for 3s on 16 size blocks: 1397470 aes-256 cbc's in 2.99s
Doing aes-256 cbc for 3s on 64 size blocks: 374059 aes-256 cbc's in 2.98s
Doing aes-256 cbc for 3s on 256 size blocks: 95815 aes-256 cbc's in 2.99s
Doing aes-256 cbc for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 24104 aes-256 cbc's in 2.99s
Doing aes-256 cbc for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 3010 aes-256 cbc's in 2.98s

Is it as expected or I'm doing something wrong?

Max

Max,

This is as expected.  For small block sizes, it is faster to perform the crypto functions in software.  Using the hw accelerator requires moving data into and out of the crypto modules.  As you show above, the throughput with hw acceleration overtakes the sw only mode somewhere around 1024 byte block sizes.

There is another aspect to performance that should also be considered.  Using the hw accelerators reduces the CPU bandwidth during crypto functions.  Try using "time -v" in front the command and observe the difference in CPU usage.  For example:

time -v cryptotest -a aes256 200 16 64 256 1024 8192

This should give some indication as to how much CPU bandwidth is being saved with hw acceleration.

Regards,

Greg Turner

Chase,

I've just had a quick look at Kernel PSP version 04.06.00.08 which has been tagged few days ago on Arago GIT repository, and I did not found any integration of HW Crypto support. Does it mean it has been deferred and will no more be included into SDK 05.05.00.00?

Max

Thanks for the confirmation: I wanted to be pretty sure before moving my customizations from one git branch to another.

Regards