Experimental Evaluation of Hash Function Performance on Embedded Devices

With embedded devices collecting, manipulating, and transmitting growing amounts of data in various Internet of Things applications, it is increasingly important to process data on device for performance and energy efficiency. A common data processing function is computing hash functions for use in hash-based data structures and algorithms. The limited computation and memory resources of embedded devices results in different performance characteristics compared to general purpose computers. This research implements and experimentally evaluates the performance of non-cryptographic hash functions. Seven hash function algorithms were chosen on the basis of implementation complexity, popularity, and compatibility with microcontroller architecture. These functions were implemented in C/C++ for the ATmega328P 8-bit microcontroller used in the Arduino Uno, and on the Microchip PIC24 16-bit microcontroller. Some optimizations were implemented to reduce memory usage. Experimental results demonstrate that there are platform specific performance differences.