Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 21:51:47 -0500 From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: Soren Kristensen <soren@soekris.com> Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Status of encryption hardware support in FreeBSD Message-ID: <15162.39875.353224.757884@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <3B3A7823.337CA425@soekris.com> References: <107.1bc2228.2868aa7a@aol.com> <3B3A7823.337CA425@soekris.com>
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Soren Kristensen <soren@soekris.com> types: > I'm not claiming any specific numbers, just that the chip I'm using, the > lowest end hi/fn 7951, is said to be faster than your typical highend > >1Ghz CPU doing 3-DES. [ ... ] > I'm only talking about this specific case of doing computing intensive > encryption.... As a hardware designer, I'm very well aware of all the > different bottlenecks. The crucial bottleneck for this kind of thing is the doubling time. Unless your special purpose hardware doubles in speed as fast or faster than general purpose CPUs, then eventually it's going to be slow, then expensive, and finally dead. Given the two doubling times and current relative speed, you can easily predict when general purpose CPUs well be faster and then when they will be more cost effective. At that point, your special purpose hardware is dead, and just waiting for the rest of the world to realize it. Given the predicted lifetime, you can make a rational decision about whether it's worth the effort to support the hardware. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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