Re: GSoc2010 project suggestion: swcryptX

On Feb 22, 2010, at 1:12 PM, Hubert Feyrer wrote:

>   The communication overhead involves data transfers over a PCI bus, which
>   is of relatively low speed compared to today's modern CPUs. Preventing the
>   data transfer is a worthwhile goal. In coordination with today's modern
>   multi-core CPUs, using one or more CPUs solely for the purpose of crypto
>   acceleration, a measurable improvement of crypto performance is expected.
>   At the same time, no special hardware requirements beyond the CPU exist.
>   This allows turning standard contemporary systems into fast crypto systems
>   easily.

I'm skeptical.  If a particular thread of execution has to wait for the crypto to happen anyway, let it do it work itself.

This would have been vaguely interesting a few years ago before our kernel was as MP-capable as it is today.  But given where we are now, I don't see this as having much of a benefit, and maybe it will even slow stuff down.

-- thorpej