Linux's ace in the hole against Windows: a new encryption algorithm could decide the battle

It is undeniable to affirm that as things stand today, the issue of data encryption plays a key role in the protection of privacy and information security. However, this security measure can have a somewhat negative impact on the performance of storage devices such as solid state drives (SSD).

Recently, it has been observed that BitLocker encryption, used by default in the Windows operating system, can cause a decrease in the performance of SSDs, reducing its speed by up to 46%.

This encryption, which uses the Neowin.

But be careful because on the other side of the scale is Linux, where it seems that the improvements in this aspect have only just begun. Linux kernel version 6.10 is being developed with a special focus on AES-XTS encryption, a widely used algorithm to ensure the security of stored data.and all from Google's Eric Biggers, who is working on optimized implementations of AES-XTS for AMD and Intel processors.

The first tests of these improvements show quite positive results for the future. A huge increase in performance has been seen, with improvements of up to 155% in the case of AMD processorsand all thanks to the optimization of hardware-specific encryption instructions, such as AES-NI, VAES and AVX, which are designed to speed up the data encryption and decryption process.

Although all the tests have not yet been completed to confirm all this data 100%, and see how it affects the Linux operating system compared to Windows, it is evident that there is a great advance here in terms of security, but also in efficiency.