Commodity hardware performance in AES processing

Specialized encryption processors offer both low latency and high throughput at the expense of higher cost. A modern x86 system that encompasses several compute architectures (SISD/SIMD) might be able to perform well compared to a dedicated encryption unit at the fraction of the cost. This paper presents how one might accelerate AES ECB 128 bit using modern commodity hardware found in today´s x86 computers. Focus architecture is AMD A6 5400K, coupled with a discrete GPU AMD R7 250. Benchmark results compare CPU OpenSSL execution, CPU AES-NI acceleration, integrated, discrete GPU and heterogeneous combinations of the above processing units. We present multiple test results and attempt to explain some inconsistencies of what would be expected.