| Algorithm | Throughput (GB/s) | | :--- | :--- | | XXH3 | | | XXH128 | 32.23 | | XXH64 | 12.55 | | MD5 | 0.65 |
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| Feature | MD5 | xxHash (XXH3) | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | | 128 bits (16 bytes) | 32, 64, or 128 bits | | Speed | Slow (300 MB/s) | Extremely Fast (30+ GB/s) | | Cryptographic Security | Broken (Not secure) | None (Zero security) | | Collision Resistance | Moderate (Adversarial possible) | Low (Trivial if targeted) | | Avalanche Effect | Good | Excellent (Better than MD5) | | Use Case | Legacy checksums, non-adversarial dedup | Databases, Hash Tables, Networking, Compression | | Standardization | RFC 1321 | None (Community standard) | xxhash vs md5
While xxHash is not mathematically secure against targeted malicious collisions, it offers . For unintended data corruption, accidental duplicates, or database indexing, xxHash passes the stringent SMHasher test suite, proving its reliability for data integrity. Feature Comparison Matrix Type Non-Cryptographic Cryptographic (Legacy) Primary Goal Execution Speed Data Security / Integrity Output Size 32, 64, or 128 bits Speed Extremely Fast (GB/s) Moderate (MB/s) Cryptographic Security Broken (Do not use for security) Main Application Hash tables, games, big data Legacy checksums, file verification Choosing the Winner for Your Use Case Use xxHash When: You are building hash tables or dictionaries in software.
Given these characteristics, choosing the right hash depends entirely on your threat model and performance requirements. | Algorithm | Throughput (GB/s) | | :---
Created by Yann Collet (author of LZ4 compression), xxHash prioritizes (a single input bit flips ~50% of output bits) and collision resistance for non-adversarial inputs at breakneck speed. It makes no guarantees against an attacker.
Collisions can be crafted in seconds on a laptop (e.g., two different executable files with same MD5 hash, first demonstrated by Wang et al. in 2004, refined to practical attacks since). An attacker can produce two SSL certificates with different identities but identical MD5 hash — leading to catastrophic trust violations. It makes no guarantees against an attacker
Note: For any new application requiring actual cryptographic security, skip MD5 entirely and use or BLAKE3 .
xxHash comes in several variants:
The fundamental distinction between these two algorithms lies in their design goals.