Adding to the list of pull requests submitted early in advance of the Linux 6.18 merge window opening are several cryptography-related improvements. In particular, some nice performance optimizations once again for the Linux kernel.

Google engineer Eric Biggers continues leading some very nice performance improvements in the cryptography space for the Linux kernel.

First up is a pull request adding interleaved SHA-256 hashing support . This 2-way interleaved SHA-256 hashing is immediately used by the FS-VERITY module for faster file data verification. In turn it's been observed that FS-VERITY performance improves nicely across many Intel/AMD x86_64 and AArch64 processors. Eric Biggers reported in the patch that it's roughly 35% faster performance.

Also sent in was the FSCRYPT pull request for Linux 6.18. The focus there is on using HMAC-SHA512 library functions rather than going through crypto_shash. In turn FSCRYPT should enjoy this simpler and faster and more reliable code path.

Lastly there was a pull request sent out on Saturday for crypto library updates . This pull brings RISC-V optimized code for Poly1305, simplifies other code, and always enabling architecture-optimized BLAKE2s code.