Introduction to QAT(Quick Assist Technology)

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 QAT is the technology provided by intel to offload CPU intense workloads like Compression, Encryption to QAT hardware. QAT is more efficient than a general-purpose CPU in terms of cost and performance.

QAT is a Hardware  Accelerator that can be add on to a card like RAM or inside the CPU.QAT gives higher performance when compared to the traditional compression technique.


Some of the benefits of using QAT are as follows

  • A higher compression ratio which increases Physical storage available
  • Improved throughput as CPU  workload is offloaded to QAT Hardware
  • Increased performance as the time taken is very less compared to traditional software techniques
  • CPU time can be utilized for performing some other operations 


                                        FIG: QAT Hardware Adapter


QAT is open-source and can be consumed either through the QAT library or through a development kit provided by intel for using encryption, decryption, compression, or decompression.

QAT supports Cipher operations like DES, AES....etc. 
FIG : Software Architecture using QAT

Intel QAT Adapters are available as PCI Express* Gen 3-compliant cards that support functionality such as the following:
  • I/O virtualization using PCI-SIG Single-Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV).
  • VPN traffic acceleration, with up to 50 Gbps crypto throughput and support for IPsec and SSL acceleration.
  • Compression/decompression up to 24 Gbps throughput
 Zero copy can be achieved in the user space by pre-allocating a memory chunk of large size and using it for QAT data transmission instead of using DMA.With this, I'll end the introduction to QAT.For further reading please go through the reference,



References:
Intel Quick Quide 
QAT intel driver
QAT user space library










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