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Informational 16 Bitcoin

hashes: Add 4-way SSE4.1 SHA256d for 64-byte input

Public commit record

What the developer wrote

Authored by jrakibi

73/100 · Adequate
hashes: Add 4-way SSE4.1 SHA256d for 64-byte input

add the three transforms for sha256(sha256(64_bytes)) using SSE4.1 SIMD.

SSE4.1 uses 128-bit registers, so we can pack four 32-bit words into
each register and compute 4 independent hashes in parallel with a
single SIMD op.

- Transforms 1 & 2 compute the inner `sha256(64_bytes)`.
- Transform 3 computes sha256(output_of_T1_and_T2).

rounds are fully unrolled (we will use a round! macro to fold them
in the next patch).
✓ Specific, descriptive subject✓ Names a concrete action or component✓ Provides detailed explanatory context
The short version

What changed, and why it matters

This commit adds a new, faster way to calculate SHA256d hashes for 64-byte inputs on modern Intel/AMD processors using SSE4.1 CPU instructions. It is a pure performance optimization and does not appear to fix or introduce a security vulnerability based on the code shown. However, because it is new cryptographic code, any bug in it could in principle produce wrong hash results, which would be a correctness issue rather than a direct security flaw.

Recommended action

Treat as a routine performance optimization. Before this code is wired into production paths, ensure it has comprehensive test vectors against the generic SHA256d implementation and that runtime CPU-feature detection is present so the SSE4.1 path is only used when the processor supports it. A follow-up review should verify the round constants and message-schedule updates against Bitcoin Core's sha256_sse41.cpp reference.

Security signals we found

01

New unsafe SIMD cryptographic code added

02

No runtime CPU feature detection visible in this commit

03

Module declared but not yet integrated into dispatch logic

04

Large amount of hand-rolled SHA256 round constants; correctness relies on accurate transcription from Bitcoin Core reference

Risk score

Why this scored 16/100

Our methodology →
Potential impact 0/30
Exploitability 0/25
Stealth signal 0/15
Affected reach 5/15
Confidence 8/10
Evidence quality 3/5
Human-validated context

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