Subject: Re: Adding opencrypto, crypto acceelerator to GENERIC kernels?
To: Jonathan Stone <jonathan@DSG.Stanford.EDU>
From: Jason Thorpe <thorpej@wasabisystems.com>
List: tech-userlevel
Date: 11/19/2003 12:31:49
On Nov 19, 2003, at 10:02 AM, Jonathan Stone wrote:

> The Soekris vpn1201 (http://www.soekris.com/) has a Hifn 7951; they
> have a prototype follow-on with a Hifn 7955 which adds AES support.
> Soekris kindly sent me a vpn1201 for NetBSD driver development, so it
> should continue to be well-supported. The 7951 does DES and 3DES
> somewhat faster than a 1ghz P3; but without eating the entire CPU
> doing crypto.

...and, fwiw, they also have a mini-pci version that is geared for 
their net4501, etc. single-board computers.  Since these things have 
AMD SC520 or NS Geode CPUs on them, the offload card is faster than the 
CPU :-)

(Though, you have to beware -- if you're using all 3 10/100 ports on 
the net4501, there is very little PCI bus bandwidth left over for the 
Hifn, so design your system accordingly.)

         -- Jason R. Thorpe <thorpej@wasabisystems.com>