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The Challenge of Large File Checksums(ppppp.dev)
7 points by I_like_tomato 2 days ago | 4 comments
  • BobbyTables22 days ago

    I don’t understand the goal here.

    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.

    • I_like_tomatoa day ago |parent

      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

      • BobbyTables23 hours ago |parent

        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.

  • dabigeda day ago

    Why not use a faster hashing algorithm like xxhash?

    This code is using sha256 which, whilst cryptography secure, is a massive burden for computation.