Re: It jerked and it berked but the thing really worked!

["Halvar Flake" <halvar () gmx de>]

Hey all,

no offense Dave, but a Java or C# implementation of a hash function is
for most
purposes useless. Hash functions are used in a lot of environments where
interpreters for Java or C# are not available (nor desirable), and such
code would
make performance evaluations unnecessarily difficult.

Also, hash functions are very much tailored to the CPUs they run on
(hence the
proliferation of add/xor/rol constructs in the SHA-3 contest) --
building a hash
function optimized for the JVM would probably use different building blocks.
I have no idea which instructions in the JVM are "faster" than others, and
what the effects of the JIT compiler are -- could anyone clue me in ?

Thirdly, "optimizing a hash function at a higher level" ... *cough* ...
there's no
data structures to speak of, and each hash function just churns through
bunch of bits.
This sounds like having drunk too much HLL coolaid. "Don't worry about a
thing,
optimize the high level bits of your algorithm" ... doesn't fly when
there is nothing
to optimize at the high level, and you still need to calculate an HMAC
for each
packet passing through.

Anyhow, your post served it's purpose ... as flamebait ;)

Anyhow, back to work.
Cheers,
Halvar

_______________________________________________
Dailydave mailing list
Dailydave () lists immunitysec com
http://lists.immunitysec.com/mailman/listinfo/dailydave