20. SNOW 3G Crypto Poll Mode Driver

The SNOW3G PMD (librte_crypto_snow3g) provides poll mode crypto driver support for utilizing Intel IPSec Multi-buffer library which implements F8 and F8 functions for SNOW 3G UEA2 cipher and UIA2 hash algorithms.

20.1. Features

SNOW 3G PMD has support for:

Cipher algorithm:

  • RTE_CRYPTO_CIPHER_SNOW3G_UEA2

Authentication algorithm:

  • RTE_CRYPTO_AUTH_SNOW3G_UIA2

Note

The latest v1.3 add ARM64 port of ipsec-mb library support ARM platform.

20.2. Limitations

  • Chained mbufs are not supported.
  • SNOW 3G (UIA2) supported only if hash offset field is byte-aligned.
  • In-place bit-level operations for SNOW 3G (UEA2) are not supported (if length and/or offset of data to be ciphered is not byte-aligned).

20.3. SNOW3G PMD vs AESNI MB PMD

AESNI MB PMD also supports SNOW3G cipher and authentication algorithms. It is recommended to use the AESNI MB PMD, which offers better performance on Intel processors. Take a look at the PMD documentation (AES-NI Multi Buffer Crypto Poll Mode Driver) for more information.

20.4. Installation

To build DPDK with the SNOW3G_PMD the user is required to download the multi-buffer library and compile it on their user system before building DPDK.

For x86 system, the multi-buffer library is available here. The latest version of the library supported by this PMD is v1.4, which can be downloaded from https://github.com/01org/intel-ipsec-mb/archive/v1.4.zip.

For Arm system, ARM64 port of the multi-buffer library can be downloaded from https://gitlab.arm.com/arm-reference-solutions/ipsec-mb/-/tree/main/. The latest version of the library supported by this PMD is tagged as SECLIB-IPSEC-2023.06.20.

After downloading the library, the user needs to unpack and compile it on their system before building DPDK:

make
make install

The library requires NASM to be built on x86. Depending on the library version, it might require a minimum NASM version (e.g. v0.54 requires at least NASM 2.14).

NASM is packaged for different OS. However, on some OS the version is too old, so a manual installation is required. In that case, NASM can be downloaded from NASM website. Once it is downloaded, extract it and follow these steps:

./configure
make
make install

Note

Compilation of the Multi-Buffer library is broken when GCC < 5.0, if library <= v0.53. If a lower GCC version than 5.0, the workaround proposed by the following link should be used: https://github.com/intel/intel-ipsec-mb/issues/40.

As a reference, the following table shows a mapping between the past DPDK versions and the external crypto libraries supported by them:

Table 20.1 DPDK and external crypto library version compatibility
DPDK version Crypto library version
16.04 - 19.11 LibSSO SNOW3G
20.02 - 21.08 Multi-buffer library 0.53 - 1.3*
21.11+ Multi-buffer library 1.0 - 1.4*

* Multi-buffer library 1.0 or newer only works for Meson but not Make build system.

20.5. Initialization

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

  • Build the multi buffer library (explained in Installation section).

To use the PMD in an application, user must:

  • Call rte_vdev_init(“crypto_snow3g”) within the application.
  • Use –vdev=”crypto_snow3g” in the EAL options, which will call rte_vdev_init() internally.

The following parameters (all optional) can be provided in the previous two calls:

  • socket_id: Specify the socket where the memory for the device is going to be allocated (by default, socket_id will be the socket where the core that is creating the PMD is running on).
  • max_nb_queue_pairs: Specify the maximum number of queue pairs in the device (8 by default).
  • max_nb_sessions: Specify the maximum number of sessions that can be created (2048 by default).

Example:

./dpdk-l2fwd-crypto -l 1 -n 4 --vdev="crypto_snow3g,socket_id=0,max_nb_sessions=128" \
-- -p 1 --cdev SW --chain CIPHER_ONLY --cipher_algo "snow3g-uea2"