SHA-1, SHA-2 and MD5
Hashing cores

Overview

The cryptographic hash algorithms SHA-1, SHA-2 family (SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512) and MD5 are commonly used one-way functions that take an arbitrary length file or message and return a fixed length value known as a message digest. The digest is a unique compressed and irreversible representation of the original message which can be used to provide integrity checking since any change to the message also changes the digest value.

The Secure Hash Algorithms (SHA) were developed by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and are defined in FIPS 180-4. They are used in applications such as digital signatures, message authentication, file identification and data deduplication. When used with the standard HMAC construction the hashing function is keyed to provide origin authentication and data integrity checking in security protocols such as IPsec and TLS/SSL.

Which Hashing core family should I choose?

Helion has designed two highly efficient families of hashing cores to meet the needs of both high performance and low rate/low area applications:

	For a combination of high speed and efficiency, use the Helion FAST Hashing core family for data rates up to 4Gbps... our fastest hashing solutions.
	For low area, power and data rate applications, use the Helion TINY Hashing core family for data rates up to 100Mbps... our smallest hashing solutions.