Compute single MD5 SHA1 hash on GPU

Question

I was wondering if it is possible to compute a single MD5 or SHA1 hash on GPU more efficiently than on CPU.

I know that there are apps that compute tons of hashes in parallel to brute force passwords. That's not what I'm looking for. I would like to quickly hash large buffers of data.

Looking at the algorithms it doesn't seem possible to parallelize them for efficient GPU computing. But perhaps I'm wrong?

Answer 1

A single MD5 or SHA1 hash cannot be computed efficiently on GPU. These two hashing algorithms cannot be parallelized but are inherently sequential. GPUs can only work efficiently on task that can be broken into thousands of parallel parts. GPUs are much slower than regular CPUs on sequential tasks. Bruteforcing passwords works because hashes for many different passwords can be calculated at the same time.