From: Linus Torvalds Subject: Re: Crypto Update for 2.6.38 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2011 13:23:19 -0800 Message-ID: References: <20081225002020.GA2912@gondor.apana.org.au> <20090324044932.GA18245@gondor.apana.org.au> <20091204135530.GA29371@gondor.apana.org.au> <20100226004914.GA20812@gondor.apana.org.au> <20100519020603.GA19654@gondor.apana.org.au> <20100521104404.GA29530@gondor.apana.org.au> <20100804140448.GA4042@gondor.apana.org.au> <20101024061625.GA23715@gondor.apana.org.au> <20110106000157.GA16089@gondor.apana.org.au> <20110106211645.GA26184@gondor.apana.org.au> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Cc: "David S. Miller" , Linux Kernel Mailing List , Linux Crypto Mailing List To: Herbert Xu Return-path: Received: from smtp1.linux-foundation.org ([140.211.169.13]:43631 "EHLO smtp1.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753079Ab1AFVY3 (ORCPT ); Thu, 6 Jan 2011 16:24:29 -0500 In-Reply-To: <20110106211645.GA26184@gondor.apana.org.au> Sender: linux-crypto-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 1:16 PM, Herbert Xu wrote: > On Thu, Jan 06, 2011 at 10:05:46AM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote: >> >> Is there really any point to this? And can we get more explanation of >> what the interface is, and who would use it? > > I think you've answered it yourself in the third paragraph :) No I didn't. What part of "can we get more explanation of what the interface is" is unclear? Explanations of interface. Code. Who uses it? What are the actual performance benefits on real code? Quite frankly, asynchronous external devices using DMA or similar are seldom real performance improvements. The bus and cache traffic tends to overwhelm any other advantage, and commonly the result is (a) lower performance with (b) better-looking profiles. But "better-looking profiles" isn't actually a real advantage. And I really do want to hear about new kernel interfaces. What _are_ the interfaces, and what are the advantages to them. Linus