aes-x86_64 seems slower than the generic implementation

From: Peter Wu
Date: Sat Apr 19 2014 - 10:42:27 EST


Hi!

When comparing the x86_64 assembly implementation (module aes-x86_64) against
the generic AES implementation, I found that the generic implementation was
consistenly faster.

Test setup #1:

* cryptsetup 1.6.4
* Linux v3.15-rc1-356-gebfc45e,
https://github.com/Lekensteyn/aur/blob/1d1950/linux-custom/config
* CPU: Intel i5-460M
* Distro: Arch Linux x86_64

Command:

for i in {0..10};do cryptsetup benchmark --cipher aes-xts; done

Test results for n=11, mean (+ standard deviation), enc/dec:

* aes-x86_64: 139.6 (0.68) / 138.5 (0.22)
* aes-generic: 144.8 (0.63) / 144.6 (0.31)


About a month ago, I conducted a similar test on a different machine[1].

* cryptsetup 1.6.4
* QEMU: 1.7.0
* Linux (guest, no modules): v3.14-rc7-59-g08edb33
* Linux (host): v3.14-rc5
* CPU: Intel i7-3770

Test results comparing aes-generic, aes-x86_64 and AESNI (n=3):

generic x86_64 aesni
* aes-cbc-128 201/276 200/280 669/2500
* aes-cbc-256 162/205 159/208 492/1835
* aes-xts-256 275/270 272/276 2050/2034
(note, AES-NI performance varies a lot)

Aren't the assembly implementations supposed to be faster?

Kind regards,
Peter

[1]: https://lekensteyn.nl/files/linux-crypto-benchmark/

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