User space library
User space library
Posted Aug 19, 2026 1:07 UTC (Wed) by wahern (subscriber, #37304)In reply to: User space library by kleptog
Parent article: Fedora prepares for the end of AF_ALG
The original motivation was user space access to crypto accelerators. Though, oddly 2010 was about the time traditional crypto accelerators were at the tail end of their useful lives. AES-NI came out circa 2010, server processors could do public-key operations fast enough to be cost competitive or downright cheaper than dedicated cards, and at the high-end the entire TLS stack moved to the card--not something you could expose through the existing crypto APIs. OpenBSD removed /dev/crypto circa 2015 precisely because it wasn't worth it anymore.