Linux 5.18 Crypto Has Arm Optimizations, AVX For SM3, Xilinx SHA3 Driver

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Kernel on 24 March 2022 at 05:02 AM EDT. Add A Comment
LINUX KERNEL
The crypto subsystem updates have landed in the Linux 5.18 kernel.

On the Arm side there are a number of improvements this cycle including Arm NEON AES optimizations and accelerated crc32_be for AArch4. The continued expansion of NEON usage within the kernel is great to see for Arm users.

On the x86/x86_64 side, the Linux 5.18 crypto subsystem updates bring AVX-accelerated SM3 hashing. SM3 is one of the hashing algorithms backed by China with the Chinese Commercial Cryptography Suite. This AVX-optimized version is showing to performance substantially faster than the generic code path for in-kernel SM3 hashing.

Also notable with the Linux 5.18 crypto updates is the introduction of a Xilinx SHA3 driver. This Xilinx SHA3 driver supports their ZynqMP SoC and allows using that SoC's engine for secure hash calculations. See this pull for the full list of crypto feature updates this cycle.

While not directly connected to the crypto pull, the Linux 5.18 kernel also pulled in the many random number generator (RNG) updates. However, the change around unifying /dev/random and /dev/urandom has been backed out due to some CPU architectures not having enough source of randomness at boot and no jitter entropy.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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