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From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
To: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Cc: "Adam Langley" <agl@google.com>,
	"Johannes Schindelin" <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>,
	"Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason" <avarab@gmail.com>,
	"brian m. carlson" <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>,
	"Jeff King" <peff@peff.net>, "Mike Hommey" <mh@glandium.org>,
	"Brandon Williams" <bmwill@google.com>,
	"Linus Torvalds" <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
	"Git Mailing List" <git@vger.kernel.org>,
	"Stefan Beller" <sbeller@google.com>,
	"Jonathan Tan" <jonathantanmy@google.com>
Subject: Re: Which hash function to use, was Re: RFC: Another proposed hash function transition plan
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2017 14:24:14 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20170616212414.GC133952@aiede.mtv.corp.google.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <xmqqr2yjwsb6.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>

Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:
>> Adam Langley <agl@google.com> writes:

>>> However, as I'm not a git developer, I've no opinion on whether the
>>> cost of carrying implementations of these functions is worth the speed
>>> vs using SHA-256, which can be assumed to be supported everywhere
>>> already.
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> My impression from this thread is that even though fast may be
>> better than slow, ubiquity trumps it for our use case, as long as
>> the thing is not absurdly and unusably slow, of course.  Which makes
>> me lean towards something older/more established like SHA-256, and
>> it would be a very nice bonus if it gets hardware acceleration more
>> widely than others ;-)
>
> Ah, I recall one thing that was mentioned but not discussed much in
> the thread: possible use of tree-hashing to exploit multiple cores
> hashing a large-ish payload.  As long as it is OK to pick a sound
> tree hash coding on top of any (secure) underlying hash function,
> I do not think the use of tree-hashing should not affect which exact
> underlying hash function is to be used, and I also am not convinced
> if we really want tree hashing (some codepaths that deal with a large
> payload wants to stream the data in single pass from head to tail)
> in the context of Git, but I am not a crypto person, so ...

Tree hashing also affects single-core performance because of the
availability of SIMD instructions.

That is how software implementations of e.g. blake2bp-256 and
SHA-256x16[1] are able to have competitive performance with (slightly
better performance than, at least in some cases) hardware
implementations of SHA-256.

It is also satisfying that we have options like these that are faster
than SHA-1.

All that said, SHA-256 seems like a fine choice, despite its worse
performance.  The wide availability of reasonable-quality
implementations (e.g. in Java you can use
'MessageDigest.getInstance("SHA-256")') makes it a very tempting one.

Part of the reason I suggested previously that it would be helpful to
try to benchmark Git with various hash functions (which didn't go over
well, for some reason) is that it makes these comparisons more
concrete.  Without measuring, it is hard to get a sense of the
distribution of input sizes and how much practical effect the
differences we are talking about have.

Thanks,
Jonathan

[1] https://eprint.iacr.org/2012/476.pdf

  reply	other threads:[~2017-06-16 21:24 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 113+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2017-03-04  1:12 RFC: Another proposed hash function transition plan Jonathan Nieder
2017-03-05  2:35 ` Linus Torvalds
2017-03-06  0:26   ` brian m. carlson
2017-03-06 18:24     ` Brandon Williams
2017-06-15 10:30       ` Which hash function to use, was " Johannes Schindelin
2017-06-15 11:05         ` Mike Hommey
2017-06-15 13:01           ` Jeff King
2017-06-15 16:30             ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2017-06-15 19:34               ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-06-15 21:59                 ` Adam Langley
2017-06-15 22:41                   ` brian m. carlson
2017-06-15 23:36                     ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2017-06-16  0:17                       ` brian m. carlson
2017-06-16  6:25                         ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2017-06-16 13:24                           ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-06-16 17:38                             ` Adam Langley
2017-06-16 20:52                               ` Junio C Hamano
2017-06-16 21:12                                 ` Junio C Hamano
2017-06-16 21:24                                   ` Jonathan Nieder [this message]
2017-06-16 21:39                                     ` Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
2017-06-16 20:42                             ` Jeff King
2017-06-19  9:26                               ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-06-15 21:10             ` Mike Hommey
2017-06-16  4:30               ` Jeff King
2017-06-15 17:36         ` Brandon Williams
2017-06-15 19:20           ` Junio C Hamano
2017-06-15 19:13         ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-03-07  0:17   ` RFC v3: " Jonathan Nieder
2017-03-09 19:14     ` Shawn Pearce
2017-03-09 20:24       ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-03-10 19:38         ` Jeff King
2017-03-10 19:55           ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-09-28  4:43       ` [PATCH v4] technical doc: add a design doc for hash function transition Jonathan Nieder
2017-09-29  6:06         ` Junio C Hamano
2017-09-29  8:09           ` Junio C Hamano
2017-09-29 17:34           ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-10-02  8:25             ` Junio C Hamano
2017-10-02 19:41             ` Jason Cooper
2017-10-02  9:02         ` Junio C Hamano
2017-10-02 19:23         ` Jason Cooper
2017-10-03  5:40         ` Junio C Hamano
2017-10-03 13:08           ` Jason Cooper
2017-10-04  1:44         ` Junio C Hamano
2017-09-06  6:28     ` RFC v3: Another proposed hash function transition plan Junio C Hamano
2017-09-08  2:40       ` Junio C Hamano
2017-09-08  3:34         ` Jeff King
2017-09-11 18:59         ` Brandon Williams
2017-09-13 12:05           ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-09-13 13:43             ` demerphq
2017-09-13 22:51               ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-09-14 18:26                 ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-09-14 18:40                   ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-09-14 22:09                     ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-09-13 23:30               ` Linus Torvalds
2017-09-14 18:45                 ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-09-18 12:17                   ` Gilles Van Assche
2017-09-18 22:16                     ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-09-19 16:45                       ` Gilles Van Assche
2017-09-29 13:17                         ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-09-29 14:54                           ` Joan Daemen
2017-09-29 22:33                             ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-09-30 22:02                               ` Joan Daemen
2017-10-02 14:26                                 ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-09-18 22:25                     ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-09-26 17:05                   ` Jason Cooper
2017-09-26 22:11                     ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-09-26 22:25                       ` [PATCH] technical doc: add a design doc for hash function transition Stefan Beller
2017-09-26 23:38                         ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-09-26 23:51                       ` RFC v3: Another proposed hash function transition plan Jonathan Nieder
2017-10-02 14:54                         ` Jason Cooper
2017-10-02 16:50                           ` Brandon Williams
2017-10-02 14:00                       ` Jason Cooper
2017-10-02 17:18                         ` Linus Torvalds
2017-10-02 19:37                           ` Jeff King
2017-09-13 16:30             ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-09-13 21:52               ` Junio C Hamano
2017-09-13 22:07                 ` Stefan Beller
2017-09-13 22:18                   ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-09-14  2:13                     ` Junio C Hamano
2017-09-14 15:23                       ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-09-14 15:45                         ` demerphq
2017-09-14 22:06                           ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-09-13 22:15                 ` Junio C Hamano
2017-09-13 22:27                   ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-09-14  2:10                     ` Junio C Hamano
2017-09-14 12:39               ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-09-14 16:36                 ` Brandon Williams
2017-09-14 18:49                 ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-09-15 20:42                   ` Philip Oakley
2017-03-05 11:02 ` RFC: " David Lang
     [not found]   ` <CA+dhYEXHbQfJ6KUB1tWS9u1MLEOJL81fTYkbxu4XO-i+379LPw@mail.gmail.com>
2017-03-06  9:43     ` Jeff King
2017-03-06 23:40   ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-03-07  0:03     ` Mike Hommey
2017-03-06  8:43 ` Jeff King
2017-03-06 18:39   ` Jonathan Tan
2017-03-06 19:22     ` Linus Torvalds
2017-03-06 19:59       ` Brandon Williams
2017-03-06 21:53       ` Junio C Hamano
2017-03-07  8:59     ` Jeff King
2017-03-06 18:43   ` Junio C Hamano
2017-03-07 18:57 ` Ian Jackson
2017-03-07 19:15   ` Linus Torvalds
2017-03-08 11:20     ` Ian Jackson
2017-03-08 15:37       ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-03-08 15:40       ` Johannes Schindelin
2017-03-20  5:21         ` Use base32? Jason Hennessey
2017-03-20  5:58           ` Michael Steuer
2017-03-20  8:05             ` Jacob Keller
2017-03-21  3:07               ` Michael Steuer
2017-03-13  9:24 ` RFC: Another proposed hash function transition plan The Keccak Team
2017-03-13 17:48   ` Jonathan Nieder
2017-03-13 18:34     ` ankostis
2017-03-17 11:07       ` Johannes Schindelin

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