What is AES-NI – first answer AES-NI are a set of six new
instructions introduced by Intel when we introduced the new 2010
Intel® Core™ processor family code named Westmere. AES-NI stands
for Advanced Encryption Standard – New Instructions. These
instructions implement hardware accelerated versions of certain
compute intensive steps used in the AES (RijnDael) algorithm.
Okay – so what is the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)? AES is
a standard that defines how to encrypt plain text using an
encryption key. It is implemented with the RijnDael (pronounced
Rhine Dahl) algorithm. One cool thing about AES is that even
though this algorithm is completely open for examination, it is
possible to encrypt a plain text message with it that is very,
very difficult to break. This is possible because the algorithm
takes the plain text message you want to encyrpt, and merges it
in a certain way with a secret key. As long as the key is kept
private, the encrypted message has proven to be safe from being
broken, at least to