GitHub Repository

Extremely fast digest algorithm implementations packaged into a lightweight library.

7 starsAssembly

Fast and lightweight hash implementations (xdigest)

Name: Fast and lightweight hash implementations (xdigest)
Availability: InStock
Author: rinrab

by rinrab·Feb 19, 2026·5 points·0 comments

Visit Project View on HN

AI Analysis

●●SolidWizardryNiche Gem

Assembly-optimized hashing library inspired by fixing Subversion performance, but crowded category.

Strengths

•Real measured improvement (8x faster than OpenSSL in some cases) with transparent benchmarks on public hardware
•Minimal dependencies and small footprint directly addresses bloat concerns with OpenSSL 3.0
•Assembly implementations for multiple architectures (x86, ARM, RISC-V) show thorough engineering

Weaknesses

•Cryptographic libraries are a solved, commoditized space—OpenSSL, libsodium, and libgcrypt exist and are audited
•No security audit or formal verification mentioned; cryptographic code requires trust, not just performance

Post Description

I was working on optimising Subversion. One of its bottleneck is computing file hashes. First thing I tried was to use OpenSSL for that. It significantly improved its performance. It made it 8x faster in some cases.

However, it was not optimal to use it:

- OpenSSL is heavy and bloated. It's like a whole operating system on its own.

- Since OpenSSL 3.0, low-level digest APIs are deprecated, and instead they recommend to use EVP which might be slow in some cases.

So I decided to create a new library for computing cryptographic digests. It basically takes OpenSSL's implementations, but with an aim to provide simple and lightweight access to popular hash algorithms with a focus on performance.