In addition to the [1]notable libcrypto optimizations and improvements merged during this first week of the Linux 7.1 merge window, the main cryptography subsystem pull was also merged. Notable here are the Intel QuickAssist (QAT) improvements.

Most exciting of the Intel QAT crypto driver work is [2]introducing Zstd offload support . There is basic QAT Zstandard crypto offload for QAT Gen4 and Gen5 accelerators while QAT Gen6 for Diamond Rapids is bringing a cleaner, native Zstd compression implementation as well as decompression offload too rather than just compression with prior versions of the QAT accelerators.

In addition to that QAT Zstd support there is also [3]new wireless mode support for QAT Gen6 hardware . The other QAT Gen6 addition is a new "anti-rollback" feature. This anti-rollback is a security feature to prevent older versions of QAT firmware to be installed that could potentially have security vulnerabilities, i.e. preventing downgrade attacks.

Outside of the Intel QAT work, the TI DTHEv2 driver added support for CTR(AES), GCM(AES), and CCM(AES) algorithms. There is also removal of legacy CPU-based DES/3DES acceleration from the crypto code. The SIMD SKCIPHER support is also removed from the crypto API since it is unused.

The full list of Linux 7.1 cryptography subsystem changes can be found via [4]this pull .



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.1-Crypto

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-QAT-Linux-7.1-Zstd

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-QAT-Gen6-Wireless-Mode

[4] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/ad7u9gGDjLBaFt1_@gondor.apana.org.au/