Silicon Labs Cryptography Hardware Acceleration Plugins#

Overview of plugins for hardware accelerated cryptography.

Introduction#

The Silicon Labs distribution of mbed TLS includes alternative implementations (plugins) from Silicon Labs for selected mbed TLS and PSA Crypto library functions. The plugins use the AES-, CRYPTO-, CRYPTOACC- and SE hardware peripherals to accelerate low-level cryptographic primitives and algorithms. Available acceleration hardware depends on the target device.

PSA Crypto versus mbed TLS plugins#

There are currently (mbed TLS v2.24 and forward) two sets of interfaces that have plugins for acceleration on Silicon Labs devices. The first interface is through the mbed TLS API plugins, which have been released by Silicon Labs since the mbed TLS 2.1.2 distribution. These plugins continue to be available, but will be deprecated and subsequently removed in a future release, together with the deprecation of the relevant mbed TLS APIs. It is these plugins that get exercised when calling cryptography APIs prefixed mbedtls_*.

Note

• Note that the mbed TLS API plugins have been updated, and some now depend on their PSA counterparts. This is done to streamline code on systems that use both API sets. Users are advised to update their source file lists accordingly.

The other set of plugins make up the PSA Crypto accelerator interface. These drivers provide hardware acceleration when using the PSA Cryptography APIs (prefixed psa_*). Users are encouraged to migrate to PSA Cryptography APIs for their cryptographic processing needs at their earliest convenience. For products where it does not make sense to do so (legacy products, end-of-life, ...), the mbed TLS APIs remain available.

For more information on the Silicon Labs implementation of the PSA Crypto accelerator interface across the different products, refer to Silicon Labs Cryptography Hardware Acceleration Drivers for PSA Crypto.

The application note "AN1311: Mbed TLS to PSA Crypto Porting Guide" provides detailed information related to porting an existing application based on the classic mbed TLS APIs to use the new PSA Crypto APIs. The application note also includes detailed information about which crypto functions are accelerated on specific devices.

Modules#

Silicon Labs Cryptography Hardware Acceleration Drivers for PSA Crypto

Silicon Labs Cryptography Hardware Acceleration Plugins for mbed TLS