CPU AES technology - utilized by dm-crypt?

taylorkh · 01-13-2017, 08:42 AM

The time is approaching to replace my old PC with something new. I researching processors I read on cpu-world.com:

Quote:

The i7-6700 CPU has Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) technology enabled.
These instructions provide hardware acceleration of AES encryption and decryption,
and are valuable if you run applications, that secure your disk or network data.

My question is... Would this CPU feature improve the performance of a partition encrypted with dm-crypt/LUKS? I am planning to run CentOS 7 on the new PC. Most of the search results I get deal with how to setup dm-crypt/LUKS. I already know how to do that.

TIA,

Ken

serafean · 01-13-2017, 12:45 PM

Hi,

The DM layer uses the kernel crypto layer, which does include implementations using hardware specific features. In the case of AES, the instructions are called AES-NI, and the kernel crypto layer supports them through the aesni_intel module (works on AMD too).
You can see them at work using the cryptsetup benchmark command, with the aesni_intel disabled.

taylorkh · 01-13-2017, 01:01 PM

Thanks serafean,

I will try that on my new PC when I get one.

Ken