Cryptographic operations can be very expensive when performed in software, but - in theory - they can be performed by a Cryptographic hardware accelerator to improve performance.
So, I like the idea behind Crypto Co-ops because, at least, they help with { AES-128, AES-256 }, { SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-512 } ciphers to perform symmetric key encryption and calculate message digests in hardware.
Love that, but it's all a new kind of experience for me.
I'd like to play with GNU/Linux. OpenSSH, VPN, IPsec, ... That stuff.
First I have to understand
- the kernel overhead to "pass" data from the userspace to the hardware accelerator.
- which applications can really benefit commercial hardware accelerators (there are just a few miniPCI modules).