Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 20:05:30 -0700 From: Soren Kristensen <soren@soekris.com> To: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Status of encryption hardware support in FreeBSD Message-ID: <3B3A9EFA.E65C2DC8@soekris.com> References: <107.1bc2228.2868aa7a@aol.com> <3B3A7823.337CA425@soekris.com> <15162.39875.353224.757884@guru.mired.org>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Hi, That's not really the point here, I was talking about lowest end hardware compared to high end CPU. If we compare with high end hardware, then we're talking about factor >50 faster than software.... There are chips out that can do >1Gbit 3-DES, given a 64bit/66Mhz PCI bus. I'm just starting with a low end chip to complement my 133 Mhz 486 based net4501 board, with the goal of low cost and low power, not absolute performance. Soren Mike Meyer wrote: > > 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 > -- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?3B3A9EFA.E65C2DC8>