It always pains me when I see people use cryptographic hashes (such as MD5 or SHA) in situations where they just need a hash with good mixing and avalanche beha

It always pains me when I see people use cryptographic hashes (such as MD5 or SHA) in situations where they just need a hash with good mixing and avalanche behaviour. Cryptographic hashes may perform to good quality, but they are a zillion times slower. And obviously they are not guaranteed to be reversible. Elsewhere in this discussion are some good links to fast, non-cryptographic hashing functions (very cool, I hadn't heard about SipHash before).