The crypto subsystem updates were sent out today for the Linux 6.14 kernel. Notable this time are new x86_64-specific optimizations for the AES-GCM and AES-XTS algorithms. Benefiting the most from these new x86_64 optimizations are recent AMD processors.
Eric Biggers of Google again is the one who took the lead on these latest x86_64 crypto optimizations. Biggers has made some big time kernel performance optimizations to the crypto code in prior kernel versions and it’s continued that way for the Linux 6.14 cycle.
With the crypto: x86/aes-gcm – tune better for AMD CPUs is around 2% better performance for AMD Zen 4 and Zen 5 processors on top of all the other optimizations in recent kernels.
Over on the AES-XTS side are some code size optimizations and additional optimizations improving the performance for AMD Zen 5 processors by about 3% while Intel performance staying about the same (or a 0.1% gain with Ice Lake).
Every little bit helping. Check out the recent RHEL 10 beta crypto benchmarks that illustrate the significant AMD crypto performance improvements already found from recent kernels compared to the older RHEL 9 kernel… Since then there’s just more icing on the cake with these crypto optimizations for different algorithms.
These AMD Zen optimizations in the crypto space benefit both the mobile/desktop Ryzen processors as well as the EPYC server processors.
The crypto pull request for Linux 6.14 also drops the aging Sun Niagara2 SPU driver.
The full list of crypto feature changes for Linux 6.14 can be found via this pull request.
