hifn(4)

NAME

hifn - Hifn 7751/7951/7811/7955/7956 crypto accelerator

SYNOPSIS

To compile this driver into the kernel, place the  following
lines in your
kernel configuration file:
      device crypto
      device cryptodev
      device hifn
Alternatively,  to load the driver as a module at boot time,
place the
following line in loader.conf(5):
      hifn_load="YES"

DESCRIPTION

The hifn driver supports various cards containing the Hifn

7751, 7951,
7811, 7955, and 7956 chipsets.

The hifn driver registers itself to accelerate DES, Triple

DES, AES (7955
and 7956 only), ARC4, MD5, MD5-HMAC, SHA1, and SHA1-HMAC op

erations for
ipsec(4) and crypto(4).

The Hifn 7951, 7811, 7955, and 7956 will also supply data to

the kernel
random(4) subsystem.

HARDWARE

The hifn driver supports various cards containing the Hifn

7751, 7951,
7811, 7955, and 7956 chipsets, such as:

Invertex AEON No longer being made. Came as 128KB

SRAM model, or

2MB DRAM model.

Hifn 7751 Reference board with 512KB SRAM.

PowerCrypt See http://www.powercrypt.com/. Comes

with 512KB

SRAM.

XL-Crypt See http://www.powercrypt.com/. Only

board based

on 7811 (which is faster than 7751 and

has a random
number generator).

NetSec 7751 See http://www.netsec.net/. Supports

the most

IPsec sessions, with 1MB SRAM.

Soekris Engineering vpn1201 and vpn1211

See http://www.soekris.com/. Contains

a 7951 and
supports symmetric and random number

operations.

Soekris Engineering vpn1401 and vpn1411

See http://www.soekris.com/. Contains

a 7955 and
supports symmetric and random number

operations.

SEE ALSO

crypt(3), crypto(4), intro(4), ipsec(4), random(4), cryp

to(9)

CAVEATS

The Hifn 9751 shares the same PCI ID. This chip is basical

ly a 7751, but
with the cryptographic functions missing. Instead, the 9751

is only
capable of doing compression. Since we do not currently at

tempt to use
any of these chips to do compression, the 9751-based cards

are not useful.

Support for the 7955 and 7956 is incomplete; the asymmetric

crypto facilities are to be added and the performance is suboptimal.

HISTORY

The hifn device driver appeared in OpenBSD 2.7. The hifn

device driver
was imported to FreeBSD 5.0.

BUGS

The 7751 chip starts out at initialization by only support

ing compression. A proprietary algorithm, which has been reverse engi

neered, is
required to unlock the cryptographic functionality of the

chip. It is
possible for vendors to make boards which have a lock ID not

known to the
driver, but all vendors currently just use the obvious ID

which is 13
bytes of 0.

BSD April 1, 2006

BSD