5. NXP CAAM JOB RING (caam_jr)

The caam_jr PMD provides poll mode crypto driver support for NXP SEC 4.x+ (CAAM) hardware accelerator. More information is available at:

NXP Cryptographic Acceleration Technology.

5.1. Architecture

SEC is the SOC’s security engine, which serves as NXP’s latest cryptographic acceleration and offloading hardware. It combines functions previously implemented in separate modules to create a modular and scalable acceleration and assurance engine. It also implements block encryption algorithms, stream cipher algorithms, hashing algorithms, public key algorithms, run-time integrity checking, and a hardware random number generator. SEC performs higher-level cryptographic operations than previous NXP cryptographic accelerators. This provides significant improvement to system level performance.

SEC HW accelerator above 4.x+ version are also known as CAAM.

caam_jr PMD is one of DPAA drivers which uses uio interface to interact with Linux kernel for configure and destroy the device instance (ring).

5.2. Implementation

SEC provides platform assurance by working with SecMon, which is a companion logic block that tracks the security state of the SOC. SEC is programmed by means of descriptors (not to be confused with frame descriptors (FDs)) that indicate the operations to be performed and link to the message and associated data. SEC incorporates two DMA engines to fetch the descriptors, read the message data, and write the results of the operations. The DMA engine provides a scatter/gather capability so that SEC can read and write data scattered in memory. SEC may be configured by means of software for dynamic changes in byte ordering. The default configuration for this version of SEC is little-endian mode.

Note that one physical Job Ring represent one caam_jr device.

5.3. Features

The CAAM_JR PMD has support for:

Cipher algorithms:

  • RTE_CRYPTO_CIPHER_3DES_CBC
  • RTE_CRYPTO_CIPHER_AES128_CBC
  • RTE_CRYPTO_CIPHER_AES192_CBC
  • RTE_CRYPTO_CIPHER_AES256_CBC
  • RTE_CRYPTO_CIPHER_AES128_CTR
  • RTE_CRYPTO_CIPHER_AES192_CTR
  • RTE_CRYPTO_CIPHER_AES256_CTR

Hash algorithms:

  • RTE_CRYPTO_AUTH_SHA1_HMAC
  • RTE_CRYPTO_AUTH_SHA224_HMAC
  • RTE_CRYPTO_AUTH_SHA256_HMAC
  • RTE_CRYPTO_AUTH_SHA384_HMAC
  • RTE_CRYPTO_AUTH_SHA512_HMAC
  • RTE_CRYPTO_AUTH_MD5_HMAC

AEAD algorithms:

  • RTE_CRYPTO_AEAD_AES_GCM

5.4. Supported DPAA SoCs

  • LS1046A/LS1026A
  • LS1043A/LS1023A
  • LS1028A
  • LS1012A

5.5. Limitations

  • Hash followed by Cipher mode is not supported
  • Only supports the session-oriented API implementation (session-less APIs are not supported).

5.6. Prerequisites

caam_jr driver has following dependencies are not part of DPDK and must be installed separately:

  • NXP Linux SDK

    NXP Linux software development kit (SDK) includes support for the family of QorIQ® ARM-Architecture-based system on chip (SoC) processors and corresponding boards.

    It includes the Linux board support packages (BSPs) for NXP SoCs, a fully operational tool chain, kernel and board specific modules.

    SDK and related information can be obtained from: NXP QorIQ SDK.

Currently supported by DPDK:

5.7. Pre-Installation Configuration

5.7.1. Config File Options

The following options can be modified in the config file to enable caam_jr PMD.

Please note that enabling debugging options may affect system performance.

  • CONFIG_RTE_LIBRTE_PMD_CAAM_JR (default n) By default it is only enabled in common_linux config. Toggle compilation of the librte_pmd_caam_jr driver.
  • CONFIG_RTE_LIBRTE_PMD_CAAM_JR_BE (default n) By default it is disabled. It can be used when the underlying hardware supports the CAAM in BE mode. e.g. LS1043A, LS1046A supports CAAM in BE mode. BE mode is enabled by default in defconfig-arm64-dpaa-linux-gcc.

5.8. Installations

To compile the caam_jr PMD for Linux arm64 gcc target, run the following make command:

cd <DPDK-source-directory>
make config T=arm64-armv8a-linux-gcc install

5.9. Enabling logs

For enabling logs, use the following EAL parameter:

./your_crypto_application <EAL args> --log-level=pmd.crypto.caam,<level>