| From: |
| "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@linux.intel.com> |
| To: |
| Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>,
Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
Fenghua Yu <fenghua.yu@intel.com>, |
| Subject: |
| [RFD] Direct support for the x86 RDRAND instruction |
| Date: |
| Fri, 29 Jul 2011 13:37:45 -0700 |
| Message-ID: |
| <1311971867-25124-1-git-send-email-hpa@linux.intel.com> |
| Cc: |
| "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@linux.intel.com> |
| Archive-link: |
| Article, Thread
|
From: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@linux.intel.com>
This is a proposed patchset to enable the new x86 RDRAND instruction,
labelled "Bull Mountain Technology" by Intel. It is a different beast
than any other hardware random number generator that I have personally
encountered: it is not just a random number source, but contains a
high bandwidth random number generator, an AES cryptographic whitener,
and integrity monitoring all in hardware.
For technical documentation see:
http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/download-the-lat...
This proposed patchset enables RDRAND bypass for current users of the
nonblocking random pool (that is, for /dev/urandom and its equvalent
in-kernel users) but not for the blocking pool (/dev/random). This is
because RDRAND, although reseeded way more frequently than what is
practical to do in software, is technically a nonblocking source that
can behave as a PRNG. It can be used as a source for randomness for
/dev/random, but that is not addressed by this patchset.