Adding to the list of pull requests submitted early in advance of the [1]Linux 6.18 merge window opening are several cryptography-related improvements. In particular, some nice performance optimizations once again for the Linux kernel.

Google engineer [2]Eric Biggers continues leading some very nice performance improvements in the cryptography space for the Linux kernel.

First up is a pull request adding [3]interleaved SHA-256 hashing support . This 2-way interleaved SHA-256 hashing is immediately used by the FS-VERITY module for faster file data verification. In turn it's been observed that FS-VERITY performance improves nicely across many Intel/AMD x86_64 and AArch64 processors. Eric Biggers reported in the patch that it's roughly 35% faster performance.

Also sent in was the [4]FSCRYPT pull request for Linux 6.18. The focus there is on using HMAC-SHA512 library functions rather than going through crypto_shash. In turn FSCRYPT should enjoy this simpler and faster and more reliable code path.

Lastly there was a pull request sent out on Saturday for [5]crypto library updates . This pull brings RISC-V optimized code for Poly1305, simplifies other code, and always enabling architecture-optimized BLAKE2s code.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/search/Linux+6.18

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/search/Eric+Biggers

[3] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250927202410.GC9798@quark/

[4] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250927194816.GA8682@quark/

[5] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250927200131.GB9798@quark/