"... amortized per byte." SHA-512 is in fact slower per iteration, but uses twice the block size as SHA-256. For hashing e.g. files, the per-byte number is wha

"... amortized per byte." SHA-512 is in fact slower per iteration, but uses twice the block size as SHA-256. For hashing e.g. files, the per-byte number is what matters. But when doing hash trees, for example, the per-iteration performance is what matters and SHA-256 wins out there.