Dan Anderson wrote:
>> usr/src/common/crypto/arcfour/arcfour_crypt.c
>> lines 63-65 T1
>> This code is a no-op given line 44!
>> -Krishna
>>
>
> Removed.
>
> I did it that way because the C code documents what the assembly code does,
> but it probably doesn't matter that much, so I removed it.
>
> Thanks for the review.
> - Dan
>
Just out of curiosity, why are we spending much time optimizing RC4?
RC4 is already pretty darn fast -- even without the best optimizations,
and frankly I'd think we'd see much better payoff working on AES
optimization. (Esp. given RC4 is not FIPS certifiable, and that most of
the crypto protocols are moving away from RC4 towards AES. E.g. WPA2
vs. TKIP vs. WEP.)
(Back in the SCA4000 days, we even looked at offloading RC4 because our
chip could do it. But the team decided not to do it because the cost of
the offload was about as high as the cost of doing the actual
processing, for the then-current processors such as UltraSPARC IIi and
UltraSPARC III.)
Is this work just to accelerate some kind of "micro" benchmark? Because
I strongly doubt that RC4 optimization will have a significant impact on
any real-world use. For https transactions, I believe the RSA or DSA
handshaking tends to dominate.
-- Garrett
