The i.MX RT1060 is a powerful crossover MCU implementation of the Arm Cortex-M7 core, designed and produced by NXP. This MCU contains a TRNG and a data co-processor (DCP). The latter is capable of performing AES encryption and decryption, as well as calculating SHA and SHA256 digest.
Starting from version 4.7.0, wolfSSL provides a port driver that can redirect all the AES and SHA/SHA256 operations to the DCP, which has a number of advantages over the software implementation counterparts, reducing the footprint of the compiled library, improving performance and using less power.
The DCP driver can be enabled via the compile-time flag WOLFSSL_IMXRT_DCP, which delegates all the AES and SHA/SHA256 operations to the hardware co-processor. When this option is enabled, all TLS connections using these algorithms will rely on the hardware to perform the operations.
wolfSSL can also use the TRNG present in this core as an entropy source to seed the DRBG. Support for TRNG on this board can be enabled by adding the compile-time flag FREESCALE_KSDK_2_0_TRNG.
WolfSSL is not the only component in the product family that directly benefits from the presence of these secure elements on this target platform. SSH servers and clients based on wolfSSH will automatically use the accelerators for both SHA and AES when available and compiled in. The port for i.MX-RT1060 of wolfBoot, our secure bootloader, uses the SHA256 hardware acceleration to speed up the verification of the integrity of the firmware image. A full port of wolfBoot for i.MX-RT1060 is available, and its hardware abstraction layer is distributed with wolfBoot since version 1.7.1.
i.MX-RT1060 is a popular choice as edge computing platform, often deployed in combination with a real-time operating system and TCP/IP connectivity. WolfSSL, wolfSSH, wolfBoot and wolfMQTT can be easily added to these scenarios to enable secure communication, secure remote shell and filesystem services, as well as secure boot and remote firmware updates. The extra hardware security provided by DCP and TRNG makes the i.MX-RT1060 a reliable platform to build professional grade security with the latest standards.
If you have any questions or run into any issues, contact us at facts@wolfssl.com, or call us at +1 425 245 8247.