Linux 6.8 Crypto Provides Intel IAA Compression Accelerator Driver, QAT 420xx Hardware

When it comes to the Linux kernel's "crypto" subsystem for various cryptographic and compression algorithms and various hardware drivers, the new additions for Linux 6.8 are particularly interesting on the Intel side.

First up for Intel with the crypto pull is adding support for next-gen Intel QuickAssist Technology (QAT) accelerators. The Linux 6.8 kernel has wired up support for Intel QAT 420xx devices. The Intel QAT 420xx series hardware will feature more engines (up to 16 service engines and one administration engine) and support for the ZUC and SNow 3G wireless cipher algorithms. Intel QAT 420xx hardware should be good to go when it premieres, presumably later this year but details have been light on any QAT 420xx product information.

The other exciting Linux 6.8 crypto addition for Intel is introducing the IAA crypto compression kernel driver. The Intel Analytics Accelerators (IAA) have been supported under Linux since before the launch of Xeon Sapphire Rapids processors, but this new accelerator driver is for allowing the IAA blocks to be used by the kernel. Users of the kernel crypto API like Zswap and zRAM can now leverage IAA found on Sapphire Rapids, Emerald Rapids, and future Xeon Scalable processors.

The IAA kernel driver implements sync and async versions of the DEFLATE algorithm and has shown promising results for Zswap:

This driver opens up IAA to new use-cases and can be leveraged by kernel code making use of the kernel crypto API rather than user-space software currently needing to be adapted to explicitly target the IAA accelerators.

The Linux 6.8 crypto pull more broadly drops some old/outdated algorithm support, adds incremental lskcipher/skcipher processing support, and other driver updates.

More details for those interested via the crypto pull merged last week for Linux 6.8. Linux 6.8-rc1 should be out in a few hours while the stable Linux 6.8 kernel will be out in March.