Linux libcrypto cryptography subsystem changes for the v7.1 kernel are enabling more optimizations by default and in turn helping to achieve better crypto/hashing performance on this next kernel version.

The crypto pull this week from Eric Biggers of Google migrates more hashing algorithms from the traditional crypto subsystem to the new designated area of lib/crypto/ within the Linux kernel source tree. This simplifies the implementations, helps achieve better performance, and opens the door to more simplifications and code cleaning.

AES CBC-based MACs (AES-CMAC, AES-XCBC-MAC, and AES-CBC-MAC) and GHASH are now seeing optimizations enabled by default. This isn't simply moving existing code over to lib/crypto/ but making integration enhancements along the way.

The libcrypto code in Linux 7.1 also now optimizes SHA-256 performance on Zhaoxin CPUs via the Padlock Hash Engine, dropping some old and not too useful MD5 implementations, and other changes. More details for those interested via [1]this Git merge .



[1] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=370c3883195566ee3e7d79e0146c3d735a406573