Re: parallelism in a single instance of scrypt

[Solar Designer <solar@openwall.com>]

On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 03:55:46AM -0700, Colin Percival wrote:
> Using resources other than {CPU, RAM} would dramatically increase the
> complexity of the KDF

Definitely.

> without providing a significant benefit,

Actually, making use of GPUs for "legitimate" password validation and
not just for password cracking might become a must very soon.

> especially
> if you want to get reasonably constant performance across similar generations
> of systems.  GPUs vary too much to be really useful here.

That's an implementation and/or usability issue.  Yet we may have to
accept or deal with it somehow.  Besides, GPUs embedded into the same
chips with CPUs (soon) may get more "standardized".

Alexander