Dispatching

Intel® Cryptography Primitives Library uses multiple function implementations optimized for various CPUs. Dispatching refers to detection of your CPU and selecting the corresponding Intel® Cryptography Primitives Library binary path. For example, the ippcp library in the /redist/lib/ippcp directory contains cryptographic functions optimized for 64-bit applications on processors with Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions (Intel® AVX) enabled such as the 2^nd Generation Intel® Core™ processor family.

A single Intel® Cryptography Primitives Library function, for example ippsSHA256Update(), may have many versions, each one optimized to run on a specific Intel® processor with specific architecture, for example, the 64-bit version of this function optimized for the 2^nd Generation Intel® Core™ processor is e9_ippsSHA256Update(), and the version optimized for 64-bit applications on processors with Intel® Streaming SIMD Extensions 4.2 (Intel® SSE 4.2) is y8_ippsSHA256Update(). This means that a prefix before the function name determines the CPU model. However, during normal operation the dispatcher determines the best version and you can call a generic function (ippsSHA256Update() in this example).

Intel® Cryptography Primitives Library is designed to support application development on various Intel® architectures. This means that the API definition is common for all processors, while the underlying function implementation takes into account the strengths of each hardware generation.

By providing a single cross-architecture API, Intel® Cryptography Primitives Library enables you to port features across Intel® processor-based desktop, server, and mobile platforms. You can use your code developed for one processor architecture for many processor generations.

The following table shows processor-specific codes that Intel® Cryptography Primitives Library uses:

Description of Codes Associated with Processor-Specific Libraries
Intel® 64 architecture	Windows*	Linux* OS	Description
m7			Optimized for processors with Intel SSE3
y8			Optimized for processors with Intel SSE4.2
l9			Optimized for processors with Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions 2 (Intel® AVX2)
k0			Optimized for processors with Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions 512 (Intel® AVX-512)(formerly codenamed SkyLake)
k1			Optimized for processors with Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions 512 (Intel® AVX-512)(formerly codenamed IceLake)

Product and Performance Information

Performance varies by use, configuration and other factors. Learn more at www.Intel.com/PerformanceIndex.

Notice revision #20201201