Performance impacts of using SD card encryption?
 

Hi,

I am working on a project that requires the enabling of SD card encryption across all devices in the user base (using both device key + private key).

The SD card will be storing multimedia files (i.e. large video clips), which will be played back on the device (up to 1 hour videos).

Enabling the encryption on the SD card is the easy part.

The thing that I don't have any experience with at this stage is 'what will be the impacts on the devices' resources and consequent performance' for the users?

There are concerns about increased processing during encryption/decryption for constant playback, therefore reducing battery life, and causing lock-ups even.

What i'm trying to do is to create a matrix that shows key performance indicators with encryption enabled and comparing against encryption disabled on the SD card.

Does anybody have any experience or knowledge in this area?

Any ideas are highly welcomed and would definitely assist with my project plans.

Thanks!

I think you will see the video lag if media files are encrypted, at least on older models. Maybe not on the newer devices (I haven't tried yet). And I expect you'll see variation with the strength of encryption selected. I think you will need to test it to bound the variables depending on your videos, encryption strength, model, OS versions that you have. Take it for what it's worth.

Why can't you just benchmark reading streams from the card that are in the clear vs. encrypted?