Hardware acceleration by using CPACF

The CP Assist for Cryptographic Function (CPACF) is a coprocessor that performs numerous cryptographic algorithms in hardware.

The following cryptographic operations are accelerated in the CPACF hardware:
  • Symmetric encryption, which is used for DES, TDES, AES-128, AES-128-GCM, AES-256, AES-256-GCM symmetric key ciphers.
  • Message digest algorithms, which are used for SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512 message digest algorithms.
  • Random number generation, which is used to support hardware generated random numbers by using the tpf_random function.
  • Elliptic Curve Ephemeral Diffie-Hellman (ECDHE) key exchange, which is used to establish sessions by using the supported ECDHE TLS cipher suites.

You can enter ZCPAC QUERY to determine which operations are supported on the processor level that you are running.