Hardware Acceleration

BestCrypt Volume Encryption utilizes set of machine instructions in the latest Intel processors that run rounds of AES encryption algorithms on a hardware level. As a result, speed of AES encryption module of the software utilizing AES-NI instructions increases up to 5 times and may become more than 1000 MB/sec. Overall increase of speed of disk operations on the encrypted volumes becomes higher by about 30%.

BestCrypt Volume Encryption has two modules that perform AES encryption: with software and hardware implementations of the encryption algorithms. If there is no support of AES-NI instructions on the computer, the software uses software implementation of AES. If AES-NI is supported, then the user has a choice to use or not to use the hardware support. Personal considerations of the user, company, or agency policy may do not allow using the hardware implementation, so the software has option allowing to turn off the use of the AES hardware acceleration.

To control state of the AES hardware acceleration support, run the Options -> Hardware acceleration command. The following dialog window will appear:

Set the Use Hardware Acceleration checkbox in the dialog window to turn on support of AES-NI instructions in the software.

Note that the Use Hardware Acceleration checkbox appears in disabled state (grayed out) if processor on the computer does not support AES-NI instructions.