AES-NI performance
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type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
aes-256-cbc 270639.00k 297377.60k 334020.01k 345048.41k 348517.72k
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nterestingly enough I ran the same test on a VM running on a i7 Q70 that has no aes acceleration at all and the numbers were about half what the AES accelerated chip did.
The first test is running on a 8 core AMD 8150 and the second (values are all approx half) ran on a very old wimpy i7 quad core with no AES-NI.I would expect the AMD to run 2 or 3 times faster even if it had no AES-NI. Basically I don't feel these test mean very much and that the only way to gauge performance is an actual throughput test using vpn traffic.
The number of cores is irrelevant, it's a single threaded test. (It's also worth pointing out that your bulldozer era chip isn't really 8 cores, it's 4 cores that have a multi-thread implementation similar to intel's hyperthreading, and the early releases weren't tuned very well.) I don't have any numbers for the FX-8150, but it's is an old CPU, so your results aren't necessarily unreasonable. I have tested bulldozer-based opterons and I'd have expected your results to be a bit higher based on clockspeed, but I don't have the data points to know how the results should scale on the desktop chips of that line. I would double check that you have the cryptodev checkbox turned off because that will slow things down, but that might be as good as it gets.
It's important to remember that AES-NI implementations have evolved a lot over the years, so there's a whole lot more to performance than its simple presence. You are correct that the openssl speed results alone aren't going to predict OpenVPN performance, but they are a datapoint that can help predict performance relative to other known systems, and can help establish a ceiling on performance. (E.g., a system that can only perform AES-256-CBC at 30MByte/s is never going to get more than 240Mbit/s of VPN, and much less in practice.)
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The AES test is single threaded? Is openssl also single threaded during normal use?
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The AES test is single threaded? Is openssl also single threaded during normal use?
Yes, as is OpenVPN (what you probably mean to be asking about).
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Nope - I know that openvpn is single threaded in that each instance gets a single thread.
What I'm wondering is do multiple instances of openvpn, which result in multiple openvpn threads each also result in multiple threads of openssl?
Example. Do 4 openvpn instances rely on a single instance of openssl working on the crypt or 4 threads?
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Nope - I know that openvpn is single threaded in that each instance gets a single thread.
What I'm wondering is do multiple instances of openvpn, which result in multiple openvpn threads each also result in multiple threads of openssl?
the "openssl" command line utility is single threaded unless you pass -multi (which produces an output which is pretty meaningless and hard to compare across platforms, just don't do that). The ssl library is single threaded with a process. If you run multiple instances of openvpn you are running multiple independent processes, not threads, and can utilize different cores with each process.
You didn't answer whether the cryptodev stuff was disabled in the gui.
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Yes - cryptodev is disabled and AES-NI is enabled. The pfsense VM gets about the same scores at the physical machine also, which is pretty nice to see.
I was only in the box to test why its getting random crashes, so I was just playing around and running process to stress the machine to wait for the crash.
And it died… I think the power supply is failing. Going to have to get that replaced before I can further study the mysteries of AES-NI on the AMD 8150.
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Hi all,
Version 2.4.3-RELEASE-p1 (amd64) CPU Type Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5650 @ 2.67GHz 24 CPUs: 2 package(s) x 6 core(s) x 2 hardware threads AES-NI CPU Crypto: Yes (active)I performed several tests with the following commands:
openssl speed -evp aes-128-cbc -elapsed openssl speed -evp aes-128-gcm -elapsedwith different Cryptographic Hardware and Kernel PTI settings (+PTI means Kernel PTI is enabled):
+------------------------+--------------------------+--------------------------+--------------+--------------+-----------------+-----------------+ | | AES-NI + Cryptodev + PTI | AES-NI + Cryptodev - PTI | AES-NI + PTI | AES-NI - PTI | Cryptodev + PTI | Cryptodev - PTI | +------------------------+--------------------------+--------------------------+--------------+--------------+-----------------+-----------------+ | aes-128-cbc 16 bytes | 7189 | 7794 | 612843 | 612249 | 605915 | 588186 | | aes-128-cbc 8192 bytes | 568785 | 591544 | 765053 | 763943 | 763748 | 764321 | | aes-128-gcm 16 bytes | 243029 | 243885 | 238457 | 251084 | 250158 | 229928 | | aes-128-gcm 8192 bytes | 942211 | 943865 | 944693 | 943185 | 944543 | 946034 | +------------------------+--------------------------+--------------------------+--------------+--------------+-----------------+-----------------+The router was rebooted after changing each setting.
Can anybody explain the very small values in aes-128-cbc 16 bytes test as well as remarkably smaller values in aes-128-cbc 8192 bytes test when both AES-NI and Cryptodev enabled?
Thanks in advance!
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I suggest that when both are enabled the AES-NI module registers itself as a crypto device in the framework for AES-CBC and openssl tries to use it. That results in massive additional switching especially for small packets.
Though there is a load of misinformation surrounding this and I have managed to get it wrong before!Perhaps more interesting is that you seem to be seeing a better result with PTI enabled in some cases there. I have no explanation for that.
Steve
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@stephenw10 , thanks for your prompt reply!
What is the best Cryptographic Hardware setting then? The router mainly serves as a proxy (haproxy) and openvpn server.
And why does the option "AES-NI and Cryptodev" ever exist if it degrades the performance?Regarding better results with PTI enabled - they look more like a measurement error.
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Cryptodev exists because there are other cryptographic accelerators in use on other hardware. Though almost everything easily available is now relatively ancient and surpassed by general software encryption on modern CPUs.
AES-NI exists because some code was not written/compiled to the AES instructions directly and it provides a way to access that.Personally I use AES-NI only.
Steve
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@stephenw10 said in AES-NI performance:
Perhaps more interesting is that you seem to be seeing a better result with PTI enabled in some cases there. I have no explanation for that.
Run-to-run variation. The affects of PTI should be minimal for this sort of workload. Note that the AES-NI and the cryptodev columns are effectively identical (they're executing the same code) yet they have significant differences in some cases--which are just testing artifacts. Likewise, the AES-GCM tests should be identical in all three columns PTI/non-PTI, but there's noise between runs and not enough samples to average. But mostly the only significant result is the performance of aes-ni cbc+cryptodev--don't do that!
@jazzl0ver said in AES-NI performance:
And why does the option "AES-NI and Cryptodev" ever exist if it degrades the performance?
Bad UI design, basically. And a lot of really misinformed people running tests which confused a lot of other people.
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Re-reading this thread is.... painful.
Steve
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Just to confirm: if I leave AES-NI only in Cryptographic Hardware, won't this affect OpenVPN performance which Hardware Crypto setting is BSD cryptodev engine? Or I'll have to change it to No Hardware Crypto Acceleration (since it will still utilize internal OpenSSL's AES-NI code)?
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It shouldn't make any difference since the cryptodev module will not be loaded. I would set that no
No Hardware Crypto Accelerationthere anyway though.Steve
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Thanks @stephenw10 ! I appreciate your help!
