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by nine_k 2601 days ago
8051s also seem pretty under-powered for a task like that.

One thing with encryption on a USB-connected security dongle is that your scp / rsync / git pull invocation is going to go through it, and through its crypto engine. To make it not painfully slow, the crypto engine has to be pretty fast. It's likely not very cheap, either using a (fast) general purpose CPU core, or using custom / specialized circuitry.

Paying extra for high security at high speed may make complete sense in some cases. For a cheap mass-market product, it's less likely.