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

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Kernel on 27 September 2021 at 05:22 AM EDT. 6 Comments
LINUX KERNEL
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.
6 Comments
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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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