Intel Advanced Encryption Standard Instructions (AES-NI)

The new 2010 Intel® Core™ processor family (code name Westmere) includes a set of new instructions, Intel® Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) New Instructions (AES-NI). The instructions were designed to implement some of the complex and performance intensive steps of the AES algorithm using hardware and thus accelerating the execution of the AES algorithms. AES-NI can be used to accelerate the performance of an implementation of AES by 3 to 10x over a completely software implementation.

The new AES-NI instruction set is comprised of six new instructions that perform several compute intensive parts of the AES algorithm. These instructions can execute using significantly less clock cycles than a software solution. Four of the new instructions are for accelerating the encryption/decryption of a round and two new instructions are for round key generation. The following is a description of the new instructions.

  • AESENC. This instruction performs a single round of encryption. The instruction combines the four steps of the AES algorithm - ShiftRows, SubBytes, MixColumns & AddRoundKey into a single instruction.
  • AESENCLAST. Instruction for the last round of encryption. Combines the ShiftRows, SubBytes, & AddRoundKey steps into one instruction.
  • AESDEC. Instruction for a single round of decryption. This combines the four steps of AES - InvShiftRows, InvSubBytes, InvMixColumns, AddRoundKey into a single instruction
  • AESDECLAST. Performs last round of decryption. It combines InvShiftRows, InvSubBytes, AddRoundKey into one instruction.
  • AESKEYGENASSIST is used for generating the round keys used for encryption.
  • AESIMC is used for converting the encryption round keys to a form usable for decryption using the Equivalent Inverse Cipher.
If you are using existing crypto libraries that provide the crypto functionalities including AES, all you need to do is recompile your applications to include the latest libraries.

Suportado por: 
  • OpenSSL - Direct support in V1.0 (experimental version); 0.9.8k or later via patch
  • Intel ® Integrated Performance Primitives (IPP) crypto -V6.1 or later
  • Microsoft* Cryptography API: Next Generation - Windows 7
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