gcrypt, MPI, GMP and powerpc64

[Werner Koch]

On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 16:07, tg at swox.com said:

> OK, but then you have a wonderful tool called ar.  It can extract what
> you need.

I am talking about source and not about object files.

> don't follow them.  But if you're judging local changes in any GNU/Linux
> or BSD system is an indicator on whether a package is maintained or not,
> then I suppose all and every package is unmaintained.

I don't understand why you insist after 10 years that at that time the
package was maintained.

> The NIH factor is usually the most important one in situation such as
> this.  Even if people very rarely would confess that to be a factor.

A requested design goal for GnuPG was to avoid storing any sensible data
in pageable memory.  Thus most of the alloca's had to be replaced by
custiomized malloc functions.  For a general number crunching
application this is not needed and to be avoided due to some overhead.

> Writing your own bignum code will almost surely introduce more
> security related bugs than using a well-tested library.  Do you BTW

Please check the code and you will noticed that it is a stripped down
GMP 2.0.2.

> You're paying for the NIH stuff.  If you had made the right decision,
> and used the GMP low-level interfaces just as they are, then you'd been
> much better off.

See above. 

>   I am talking about the years 1997 to 2000.
>
> Do I understand you correctly that the decisions you made in 1997 were
> based on what happened in the years 1997 to 2000?

Sorry, I can't parse that.  I simply mentioned that there was no visible
development in GMP between June 1996 and April 2000.  I started with
GnuPG in fall 1997.  

> Alright!  But what about your claims about x86 32-bit code?  Show us
> your hidden tricks!  Let me again quote your statement from last year:
> "We also need better optimized code for modern ia32 CPUS [than in GMP]

I am not anymore a machine code expert.  However SSE etc are clearly
things you want for crypto operations.


Salam-Shalom,

   Werner

-- 
Die Gedanken sind frei.  Auschnahme regelt ein Bundeschgesetz.