From: Matthias-Christian Ott Subject: Hardware acceleration indication in af_alg Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2011 15:13:52 +0200 Message-ID: <20111018131351.GB24865@qi> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii To: linux-crypto@vger.kernel.org Return-path: Received: from a.mirix.org ([78.46.130.147]:50883 "EHLO a.mirix.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755265Ab1JRNfu (ORCPT ); Tue, 18 Oct 2011 09:35:50 -0400 Received: from [139.18.255.53] (helo=qi) by a.mirix.org with esmtpsa (TLS1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_128_CBC_SHA1:16) (Exim 4.76) (envelope-from ) id 1RG9UP-0000SA-Fo for linux-crypto@vger.kernel.org; Tue, 18 Oct 2011 15:13:53 +0200 Content-Disposition: inline Sender: linux-crypto-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: I did some experiments with af_alg and noticed that to be really useful, it should indicate whether a certain algorithm is hardware accelerated. I guess this has to be inferred by the priority of the algorithm could be made available via a read-only socket option. Any thoughts on this? I can imagine, an alternative approach and perhaps better approach would be to measure the speed of the kernel provided algorithm against a software implementation, but there are many other factors that could influence the results. Therefore, it is perhaps better to just make the assumption that hardware acceleration is faster which is made in the kernel anyhow. Regards, Matthias-Christian