Exactly. You and Paul both made the same points I was going to.

Crypto cards have a configuration (one of three, as you noted) but no "speed" 
as such.

The cards can slow down if they overheat but that is exceptionally uncommon 
(I've only seen it once in the field) and even then, there is nothing visible 
via the SE/HMC when this happens.

If the card called out to IBM, it should have opened a HW case (not sure what 
they are officially called). If the original poster wants to contact me with 
the case number/IBM engineer information, I can at least try to get a better 
idea of what is going on.

Eric Rossman
---------------------------------
ICSF Security Architect
z/OS Security
---------------------------------

-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of 
Scott Chapman
Sent: Monday, October 21, 2024 7:17 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: Crypto card speed

I agree, I'm not aware of a particular generation of crypto cards running at 
different "speeds". They can be configured as either a "accelerator" or 
"coprocessor" and if the latter, either as a CCA (FIPS 140-2 certification) or 
Enterprise PKCS (PKCS certification). Those decisions do make an impact on 
performance (accelerator mode limits the operations, but does result in faster 
SSL acceleration), but asking for the "speed" seems like a weird way of asking 
for how the card is configured. 

But maybe in certain failure modes it degrades the processing speed instead of 
taking the card out entirely? IDK, but I suppose that might be possible. If so, 
where you see that I have no idea. 

Scott Chapman

On Sun, 20 Oct 2024 23:02:29 -0500, Paul Feller <[email protected]> wrote:

>Yes, there is a PCHPID assigned to the crypto features.  I've never seen any 
>place any indication of a "speed" for the crypto feature.  The crypto feature 
>is not like say a FICON feature.  With FICON you can see what speed the 
>channel has negotiated with the device at the other end.  So from my point of 
>view I'm not sure why the IBM engineer would be asking about the speed of the 
>crypto feature.
>
>
>Paul
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On 
>Behalf Of Peter
>Sent: Sunday, October 20, 2024 10:23 PM
>To: [email protected]
>Subject: Re: Crypto card speed
>
>Hello
>
>One of the Crypto pchipid generated a auto dial to IBM engineer and he 
>wanted to confirm it PCHPID was functioning and wanted to know what is 
>its current speed of crypto from the support elements advanced 
>facilities
>
>I tried all options but I couldn't see anything closer to bandwidth or speed.

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