System z9 cryptographic hardware

Several of the workloads run in our tests used the HTTPS protocol. For these workloads we compared software encryption/decryption against the System z9™ hardware assist for cryptographic functions. Our tests used asymmetric and symmetric cryptographic functions.

The SSL handshakes use asymmetric functions while the data is encrypted and decrypted with symmetric functions. The System z9 cryptographic adapter cards, Crypto Express 2 (CEX2), can accelerate asymmetric cryptographic operations. The System z9 CPACF from the System z™ processor can accelerate symmetric cryptographic operations (DES, TDES, and SHA-1 on z990/z890 and DES, TDES, SHA-1, SHA-256 and AES-128 on a z9™). Software support for System z9 cryptographic hardware is provided by libICA and the z90crypt device driver. WebSEAL requires the openCryptoki and GSKit libraries to interface to the z9 cryptographic hardware.

The CEX2C cryptographic adapter feature was used in these measurements. It provides two processors and both processors were used to accelerate asymmetric cryptographic operations.

SSL handshakes use asymmetric functions. Handshakes occur at the start of all SSL sessions. The encryption/decryption of the data is performed by symmetric functions.