There are a couple of obvious ways in which the UltraSPARC T2 hardware cryptographic accelerators could be used to improve MySQL performance:
- SSL is used to secure communication between a remote MySQL client and the MySQL server. Accordingly, it should be possible to modify the appropriate SSL libraries (yassl or OpenSSL) to use the T2 hardware accelerators where appropriate. Another option is to use the Solaris Kernel SSL proxy (KSSL) to handle the SSL processing. KSSL already uses the UltraSPARC T2 HW crypto accelerators, and so could be a very elegant solution to offloading MySQL SSL processing. Additionally, bcause KSSL runs in the kernel, offloads to the T2 crypto hardware are more efficient. After initial investigation, it appears that, due to the way secure communication isnegotiated, it will be necessary to modify MySQL because this approach can be used -- stay tuned.
- A variety of operations are supported by MySQL to secure database information, such as aes_encrypt() and des_decrypt(). Support for DES and SHA-1 are also provided. Again, it is fairly straight forward to modify this code to use the T2 hardware accelerators were appropriate.
Additional details on how to undertake these optimizations will be added ASAP.
Sign up or Log in to add a comment or watch this page.