AESNI(4)						   BSD Kernel Interfaces Manual 						  AESNI(4)

NAME

     aesni -- driver for the AES accelerator on Intel CPUs

SYNOPSIS

     To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following lines in your kernel configuration file:

	   device crypto
	   device aesni

     Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following line in loader.conf(5):

	   aesni_load="YES"

DESCRIPTION

     Starting with some models of Core i5/i7, Intel processors implement a new set of instructions called AESNI.  The set of six instructions
     accelerates the calculation of the key schedule for key lengths of 128, 192, and 256 of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) symmetric
     cipher, and provides a hardware implementation of the regular and the last encryption and decryption rounds.

     The processor capability is reported as AESNI in the Features2 line at boot.  The aesni driver does not attach on systems that lack the
     required CPU capability.

     The aesni driver registers itself to accelerate AES operations for crypto(4).  Besides speed, the advantage of using the aesni driver is that
     the AESNI operation is data-independent, thus eliminating some attack vectors based on measuring cache use and timings typically present in
     table-driven implementations.

SEE ALSO

     crypt(3), crypto(4), intro(4), ipsec(4), padlock(4), random(4), crypto(9)

HISTORY

     The aesni driver first appeared in FreeBSD 9.0.

AUTHORS

     The aesni driver was written by Konstantin Belousov <kib@FreeBSD.org>.  The key schedule calculation code was adopted from the sample pro-
     vided by Intel and used in the analogous OpenBSD driver.

BSD
								 September 6, 2010							       BSD