Nintendo Crypto Driver Being Worked On For Linux, Yields Much Better AES Performance

The Linux kernel support around the Nintendo Wii and Wii U game console hardware continues to improve and now a new Nintendo crypto driver is being tackled based on reverse-engineered documentation.

A set of patches were sent out last week for the new "nintendo-aes" driver providing AES support on the Wii / Wii U hardware based on prior reverse engineering done to the Nintendo crypto engine.

This driver to no surprise makes a big deal when it comes to AES performance in speedier results when leveraging the dedicated hardware. Compared to the AES generic driver putting out 30.9 MiB/s on the Wii U game console, with this nintendo-aes driver it allows hitting speeds of 80.7 MiB/s... 2.6x the speed of the generic code path.

The nintendo-aes driver for now is still undergoing review and discussion on the kernel mailing list.