hyperthreading disabled The consumption of cycles and instructions as shown by perf. QAT doesn't show any advantage. fio --ioengine=psync --iodepth=1 --rw=randread --direct=1 --end_fsync=1 --bs=64k --numjobs=56 --time_based --runtime=10 --group_reporting --name=job --filename=/dev/nvme3n1 raw device: 16,855,338,865 cycles 17,204,938,351 instructions dm-crypt, 4096 block, aes-ni: 50,937,954,742 cycles 79,277,461,232 instructions dm-crypt, 4096 block, qat: 237,831,255,394 cycles 83,789,788,071 instructions dm-crypt, 512 block, aes-ni: 67,513,345,274 cycles 125,093,077,484 instructions dm-crypt, 512 block, qat: 269,199,169,156 cycles 84,020,941,802 instructions