Hifn driver in SMP (was Re: GELI - disk encryption GEOM class committed.)

[Sam Leffler]

Andre Oppermann wrote:
> Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> 
>> I belive there is a bug in the HiFn chips that makes them do a soft reset
>> under some set of circumstances which we have never been able to nail
>> down.
>>
>> I have contacted HiFn about this and asked for a workaround, but
>> they seem somewhat less than eager to work the case.
>>
>> I belive the message before last was that they hard reproduced it.
>>
>> The last message was from somebody going through the piles on a
>> former employees table.
> 
> 
> What's the deal with HiFn?  IMHO Cavium are way better and much more
> performant.
> 

Not sure how you come to this conclusion about Cavium.  Last time I 
looked at their h/w it was heavily firmware-based and the whole 
environment was problematic to integrate with crypto(9).  OTOH it wasn't 
clear that integrating their stuff through the crypto subsystem would 
most effectively use their h/w; much better to integrate directly to 
ipsec and/or ssl using higher-level commands--just like hifn, broadcom, 
safenet, and everybody else.  I also have my opinions about the quality 
of their code but that's another matter.

	Sam