The Challenge of Large File Checksums(ppppp.dev)
ppppp.dev
The Challenge of Large File Checksums
https://www.ppppp.dev/the-challenge-of-large-file-checksums/
5 comments
The reasoning here is to improve getting hash of a large file (let say size > 100GB). Reading the file content sequently and hashing it will take a lot longer
I agree, but there is no way to compute the equivalent of the sequential hash using any parallel method.
This isn’t like gzip which can be parallelized.
Without standardization of a parallelized hash computation, it’s just a toy exercise in an embarrassingly parallel problem.
This isn’t like gzip which can be parallelized.
Without standardization of a parallelized hash computation, it’s just a toy exercise in an embarrassingly parallel problem.
Why not use a faster hashing algorithm like xxhash?
This code is using sha256 which, whilst cryptography secure, is a massive burden for computation.
This code is using sha256 which, whilst cryptography secure, is a massive burden for computation.
yup, I agree. I should update it to use a faster hashing algorithm. That is the next step
Splitting a file into chunks, hashing them in parallel, and then hashing the resulting hashes is certainly a valid method but not the same as hashing a file the traditional way.
Unless the world changes how they publish hashes of files available for download, I don’t see the point.