aboutsummaryrefslogtreecommitdiffstats
path: root/arch/x86/include/asm/archrandom.h
Commit message (Collapse)AuthorAge
* x86, random: Verify RDRAND functionality and allow it to be disabledH. Peter Anvin2011-07-31
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | If the CPU declares that RDRAND is available, go through a guranteed reseed sequence, and make sure that it is actually working (producing data.) If it does not, disable the CPU feature flag. Allow RDRAND to be disabled on the command line (as opposed to at compile time) for a user who has special requirements with regards to random numbers. Signed-off-by: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@linux.intel.com> Cc: Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com> Cc: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au> Cc: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
* x86, random: Architectural inlines to get random integers with RDRANDH. Peter Anvin2011-07-31
Architectural inlines to get random ints and longs using the RDRAND instruction. Intel has introduced a new RDRAND instruction, a Digital Random Number Generator (DRNG), which is functionally an high bandwidth entropy source, cryptographic whitener, and integrity monitor all built into hardware. This enables RDRAND to be used directly, bypassing the kernel random number pool. For technical documentation, see: http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/download-the-latest-bull-mountain-software-implementation-guide/ In this patch, this is *only* used for the nonblocking random number pool. RDRAND is a nonblocking source, similar to our /dev/urandom, and is therefore not a direct replacement for /dev/random. The architectural hooks presented in the previous patch only feed the kernel internal users, which only use the nonblocking pool, and so this is not a problem. Since this instruction is available in userspace, there is no reason to have a /dev/hw_rng device driver for the purpose of feeding rngd. This is especially so since RDRAND is a nonblocking source, and needs additional whitening and reduction (see the above technical documentation for details) in order to be of "pure entropy source" quality. The CONFIG_EXPERT compile-time option can be used to disable this use of RDRAND. Signed-off-by: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@linux.intel.com> Originally-by: Fenghua Yu <fenghua.yu@intel.com> Cc: Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com> Cc: Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au> Cc: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>