4. ARMv8 Crypto Poll Mode Driver

This code provides the initial implementation of the ARMv8 crypto PMD. The driver uses ARMv8 cryptographic extensions to process chained crypto operations in an optimized way. The core functionality is provided by a low-level library, written in the assembly code.

4.1. Features

ARMv8 Crypto PMD has support for the following algorithm pairs:

Supported cipher algorithms:

  • RTE_CRYPTO_CIPHER_AES_CBC

Supported authentication algorithms:

  • RTE_CRYPTO_AUTH_SHA1_HMAC
  • RTE_CRYPTO_AUTH_SHA256_HMAC

4.2. Installation

In order to enable this virtual crypto PMD, user must:

  • Download ARMv8 crypto library source code from here
  • Export the environmental variable ARMV8_CRYPTO_LIB_PATH with the path where the armv8_crypto library was downloaded or cloned.
  • Build the library by invoking:
make -C $ARMV8_CRYPTO_LIB_PATH/
  • Set CONFIG_RTE_LIBRTE_PMD_ARMV8_CRYPTO=y in config/defconfig_arm64-armv8a-linux-gcc

The corresponding device can be created only if the following features are supported by the CPU:

  • RTE_CPUFLAG_AES
  • RTE_CPUFLAG_SHA1
  • RTE_CPUFLAG_SHA2
  • RTE_CPUFLAG_NEON

4.3. Initialization

User can use app/test application to check how to use this PMD and to verify crypto processing.

Test name is cryptodev_sw_armv8_autotest. For performance test cryptodev_sw_armv8_perftest can be used.

4.4. Limitations

  • Maximum number of sessions is 2048.
  • Only chained operations are supported.
  • AES-128-CBC is the only supported cipher variant.
  • Cipher input data has to be a multiple of 16 bytes.
  • Digest input data has to be a multiple of 8 bytes.