About SHA-512 hash function
Maximum cryptographic security
SHA-512 provides 256 bits of collision resistance β that is more than the number of atoms in the visible Universe. Even accounting for Moore's Law, this will last for billions of years.
Performance on modern processors
Paradoxically, SHA-512 often runs faster than SHA-256 on 64-bit processors. This is because the algorithm is optimized for 64-bit operations.
SHA-512 for passwords
Many modern systems use SHA-512 as part of PBKDF2 or bcrypt for password hashing. The long hash makes rainbow table attacks harder.