Linux Patches Speed-Up Kernel Crypto Functions With RISC-V Vector Extensions

Patches posted this week by SiFive for the Linux kernel provide cryptographic implementations of various functions inside the Linux kernel using the processor ISA's vector crypto extensions.

The patches are intended to speed-up various Linux kernel crypto operations by leveraging the vector instructions with the RISC-V Cryptography Extensions. These vector instructions for the RISC-V Cryptography Extensions are documented via the riscv-crypto repository.

The 12 patches posted this week accelerate AES cipher, AES with CBC/CTR/ECB/XTS block modes, ChaCha20 stream cipher, GHASH for GCM, SHA-224/256 and SHA-384/512 hash, SM3 hash, and SM4 cipher.

Those interested in this work for speeding up kernel crypto operations with the RISC-V Crypto Vector instructions can see this patch series for all the details.