HiSilicon SEC2 crypto accelerator
An on-chip cryptographic accelerator built into HiSilicon's Kunpeng ARM64 server processors, exposed as a PCI device that offloads symmetric ciphers and hashing for high-throughput workloads. It targets modern data-center and cloud servers from Huawei rather than desktop or embedded use.
recommendation
It should stay because the hardware ships in current Huawei Kunpeng servers and the driver is under active upstream maintenance, with feature additions and fixes landing in 2026 and inclusion in stable releases. There is no in-kernel replacement that would offload crypto on this silicon, so removing it would force affected systems back to software-only crypto.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
March 13, 2026 patch adds device-load query functionality to the HiSilicon crypto driver set, indicating ongoing feature work around SEC2-class hardware.
- lore.kernel.org
March 30, 2026 patch fixes a format-string issue in code touching drivers/crypto/hisilicon/sec2/sec_main.c, showing current upstream maintenance.
- lore.kernel.org
SEC2-related code was included in a 2026 stable release, which is evidence of maintained, deployed hardware rather than abandoned code.
- cateee.net
LKDDb documents CRYPTO_DEV_HISI_SEC2 as an ARM64+ACPI+PCI/UACCE accelerator driver, matching a modern server-platform deployment model rather than obsolete consumer hardware.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Not a removal candidate. `lore_file_timeline` on drivers/crypto/hisilicon/sec2/sec_main.c showed active 2026 fixes/features and no removal signal; recent lore URLs above came directly from that tool. Local `exec_command` inspection of sec_main.c showed PCI IDs for Huawei devices and MODULE_DESCRIPTION("Driver for HiSilicon SEC accelerator"). The LKDDb URL is canonical recall, used to support platform/deployment context. Conclusion: SEC2 is a niche but still-relevant server accelerator family, likely present in current Huawei/Kunpeng deployments, with no natural in-tree replacement beyond generic software crypto fallbacks.