wolfSSL provides support for the i.MX6 and i.MX7, which can use NXP’s Cryptographic Assistance and Assurance Module (CAAM) to perform hardware encryption. This use of hardware encryption provides a significant performance increase when used on larger buffers, which can be seen on wolfSSL’s benchmark page.

To show this performance increase in action, wolfSSL has run its benchmarks on an NXP i.MX6 with Green Hills INTEGRITY OS. The wolfSSL benchmark application runs various hashing algorithms and records the how efficiently and quickly they were performed. Below is a comparison of the data from software encryption benchmarks and hardware encryption benchmarks, showing how well the CAAM can improve performance:

Hardware encryption speeds (MB/s):

Block size - bytes	SHA1	SHA224	SHA256	HMAC-SHA256
16	1.897	1.889	1.884	1.259
512	13.752	14.144	14.143	12.614
1024	21.337	22.291	22.314	20.192
2048	29.031	31.024	31.102	29.074
4096	34.879	37.996	38.027	36.450

Software encryption speeds (MB/s):

Block size - bytes	SHA1	SHA224	SHA256	HMAC-SHA256
16	15.419	7.484	7.476	5.282
512	21.423	9.129	9.126	8.972
1024	21.565	9.165	9.162	9.082
2048	21.625	9.174	9.165	9.137
4096	21.686	9.192	9.195	9.174

**References:
**More information about NXP’s cryptographic acceleration technology: https://www.nxp.com/applications/solutions/internet-of-things/secure-things/network-security-technology/cryptographic-acceleration-technology:NETWORK_SECURITY_CRYPTOG
NXP’s i.MX6 product pages: https://www.nxp.com/products/processors-and-microcontrollers/arm-based-processors-and-mcus/i.mx-applications-processors/i.mx-6-processors:IMX6X_SERIES
NXP’s i.MX7 product pages: https://www.nxp.com/products/processors-and-microcontrollers/arm-based-processors-and-mcus/i.mx-applications-processors/i.mx-7-processors:IMX7-SERIES