HIFN(4) Kernel Interfaces Manual HIFN(4) NAME hifn -- Hifn 7751/7951/7811/7955/7956 crypto accelerator SYNOPSIS To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following lines in your kernel configuration file: device crypto device cryptodev device hifn Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following line in loader.conf(5): hifn_load="YES" DEPRECATION NOTICE The hifn driver is deprecated and is scheduled for removal in FreeBSD 16.0. DESCRIPTION The hifn driver supports various cards containing the Hifn 7751, 7951, 7811, 7955, and 7956 chipsets. The hifn driver registers itself to accelerate AES (7955 and 7956 only), SHA1, and SHA1-HMAC operations for ipsec(4) and crypto(4). The Hifn 7951, 7811, 7955, and 7956 will also supply data to the kernel random(4) subsystem. HARDWARE The hifn driver supports various cards containing the Hifn 7751, 7951, 7811, 7955, and 7956 chipsets, such as: Invertex AEON No longer being made. Came as 128KB SRAM model, or 2MB DRAM model. Hifn 7751 Reference board with 512KB SRAM. PowerCrypt Comes with 512KB SRAM. XL-Crypt Only board based on 7811 (which is faster than 7751 and has a random number generator). NetSec 7751 Supports the most IPsec sessions, with 1MB SRAM. Soekris Engineering vpn1201 and vpn1211 See http://www.soekris.com/. Contains a 7951 and supports symmetric and random number operations. Soekris Engineering vpn1401 and vpn1411 See http://www.soekris.com/. Contains a 7955 and supports symmetric and random number operations. SEE ALSO crypto(4), intro(4), ipsec(4), random(4), crypto(7), crypto(9) HISTORY The hifn device driver appeared in OpenBSD 2.7. The hifn device driver was imported to FreeBSD 5.0. CAVEATS The Hifn 9751 shares the same PCI ID. This chip is basically a 7751, but with the cryptographic functions missing. Instead, the 9751 is only capa- ble of doing compression. Since we do not currently attempt to use any of these chips to do compression, the 9751-based cards are not useful. Support for the 7955 and 7956 is incomplete; the asymmetric crypto facili- ties are to be added and the performance is suboptimal. BUGS The 7751 chip starts out at initialization by only supporting compression. A proprietary algorithm, which has been reverse engineered, is required to unlock the cryptographic functionality of the chip. It is possible for vendors to make boards which have a lock ID not known to the driver, but all vendors currently just use the obvious ID which is 13 bytes of 0. FreeBSD 15.1 October 31, 2025 HIFN(4)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DEPRECATION NOTICE | DESCRIPTION | HARDWARE | SEE ALSO | HISTORY | CAVEATS | BUGS
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