Intel QuickAssist Technology

Intel QuickAssist Technology
Name	Intel QuickAssist Technology
Developer	Intel Corporation
Release	2012
Type	Hardware acceleration
Website	Intel product pages

Intel QuickAssist Technology

Intel QuickAssist Technology provides hardware acceleration for Secure Sockets Layer, Transport Layer Security, IPsec, and data compression workloads by offloading cryptographic and compression tasks from general-purpose x86 architecture processors to dedicated accelerators. Originally produced by Intel Corporation for line cards, servers, and networking appliances, it integrates with operating systems such as Linux kernel and firmware stacks used by vendors including Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Cisco Systems. The technology addresses throughput and latency demands found in deployments by Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft Azure, and telecommunications providers like Verizon Communications and AT&T.

Overview

Intel developed QuickAssist to meet the needs of high-throughput services such as Content Delivery Networks operated by Akamai Technologies and large-scale cloud providers including IBM Cloud and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. The product family targets acceleration of asymmetric algorithms (for example, RSA (cryptosystem) and Elliptic-curve cryptography), symmetric algorithms (such as Advanced Encryption Standard), hash functions (like SHA-2), and compression schemes (including DEFLATE). QuickAssist appears across network function virtualization platforms adopted by vendors such as VMware and Red Hat, and is packaged in silicon used in systems from Intel Xeon server families.

Architecture and Components

The QuickAssist subsystem combines a control plane accessible via driver stacks and a data plane embodied by dedicated accelerator engines on packages used with PCI Express or integrated into SoCs. Core components include cryptographic engines supporting AES-NI-compatible operations, public-key offload units for RSA (cryptosystem) and Elliptic-curve cryptography, and compression/decompression blocks implementing variants related to zlib algorithms. Management interfaces interact with firmware and driver projects such as the Linux kernel cryptographic API and vendor-specific SDKs used by Canonical and SUSE. Hardware implementations have been delivered on mezzanine cards and integrated Network Interface Cards (NICs) in platforms from Intel Xeon D and appliances from Juniper Networks.

Features and Capabilities

QuickAssist exposes features designed for high-bandwidth and low-latency services: bulk symmetric encryption (for AES modes), asymmetric crypto acceleration for RSA (cryptosystem) and Elliptic-curve cryptography, checksum and hashing offloads including SHA-1 and SHA-2, and lossless compression compatible with gzip and zlib ecosystems. It supports session management, scatter-gather I/O for DMA interactions with PCI Express, and multiple queue models used by DPDK and kernel networking stacks. Integration options include drivers for Linux kernel and user-space libraries employed by projects such as OpenSSL, WolfSSL, and GnuTLS to accelerate TLS termination in appliances from F5 Networks and Citrix Systems.

Implementations and Platforms

QuickAssist has appeared across Intel product lines deployed by hyperscalers such as Facebook and Twitter and in carrier-grade equipment from Nokia and Ericsson. Hardware forms include discrete accelerator cards conforming to PCI Express and SoC-integrated engines in platforms like Intel Atom and Intel Xeon D families. Software ecosystems supporting QuickAssist include middleware stacks from Red Hat, virtualization integration via KVM and Xen (software) hypervisors, and orchestration layers from Kubernetes where network functions are containerized by vendors such as Ciena and Arista Networks.

Performance and Benchmarking

Benchmarks typically evaluate throughput (Gbps) and transactions per second for asymmetric operations, with comparative analyses involving CPU-only baselines on Intel Xeon cores and alternative accelerators from vendors like Broadcom and NVIDIA. Published workload tests by industry labs and vendors measure TLS handshake rates using OpenSSL and bulk encryption throughput using datasets similar to those used by SPEC benchmarks. Performance gains depend on workload mixes—symmetric encryption and compression often see linear improvements, while public-key operations benefit from large reductions in CPU cycles per operation when compared to software-only stacks used by entities such as Cloudflare.

Security and Use Cases

QuickAssist supports use cases in secure web termination, VPN gateways using IPsec, WAN acceleration appliances used by Silver Peak-class solutions, and database encryption accelerators used by cloud database services like Amazon RDS and Google Cloud SQL. Security considerations include firmware integrity, secure key provisioning compatible with Trusted Platform Modules and hardware security modules sold by companies like Thales Group, and side-channel resistance similar to mitigations applied in Intel Management Engine and cryptographic libraries used by OpenSSL. Operators in finance (e.g., NASDAQ), telecommunications (e.g., Deutsche Telekom), and content delivery (e.g., Netflix) deploy QuickAssist-enabled platforms to reduce CPU load, lower latency, and meet compliance regimes enforced by standards bodies such as PCI DSS and protocols ratified by IETF.

Category:Intel hardware