OpenSolaris

Printable Version Enter a New Search
Bug ID 6812615
Synopsis 64-bit RC4 has poor performance on Intel Nehalem
State 10-Fix Delivered (Fix available in build)
Category:Subcategory solaris-crypto:algorithms
Keywords SFO | ef-reviewed
Responsible Engineer Daniel Anderson
Reported Against
Duplicate Of
Introduced In solaris_nevada
Commit to Fix snv_112
Fixed In snv_112
Release Fixed solaris_nevada(snv_112)
Related Bugs 6652716 , 6816389 , 6816967
Submit Date 3-March-2009
Last Update Date 8-April-2009
Description 
We found that RC4 performance on a Intel Nehalem box is poor when compared to other X64 platforms for 64-bit apps.

RC4 uses an assembly implementation for X64. Replacing it with a C version showed a significant improvement in performance.

Before: Encrypted for message size 8192, num threads 1, 279781 Kbytes/sec
After: Encrypted for message size 8192, 390839 Kbytes/sec

BTW, the same problem exists in OpenSSL. EF RC4 implementation is from OpenSSL.
Work Around 
N/A
Comments 
N/A