A set of 36 patches sent out overnight is making big improvements to the Linux kernel’s AES library. The patches allow for making use of the kernel’s existing architecture-optimized AES code for better performance, that code is also constant-time, lower memory use, and all-around a nice improvement over the status quo.

Google engineer Eric Biggers has been responsible for many very nice Linux x86_64 performance optimizations in recent years around the kernel’s crytographic “crypto” subsystem. His latest work for kicking off 2026 is enhancing the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) cipher library code.