On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 12:12 AM, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote:
Did you try any of the non-secure hash functions? If
you're going to
go with MD5, might as well go with the significantly faster CRC-64.
I included MD5 because MediaWiki currently uses it for some things,
and SHA-1 because it had been suggested in this discussion. I didn't
feel the need to include anything non-cryptographic because points
have been made that choosing a cryptographic hash function would be
wise (because the feature might be used for something different later,
among other things) and worries were expressed that SHA-256 might be
too slow. I think these benchmarks show that that slowness is not a
real problem, so I think we should pick the right tool for the job
rather than try to pick the fastest hash function. It wasn't a
contest, just a test to see whether SHA-256 was within the realm of
feasibility, performance-wise.
Roan