title: How many SHA256 hashes can a modern computer compute?
body: <p>I want to know the mathematical time required for cracking hashes based off different sets of characters.</p>
  
  <p>For example, using only 7 letter, US-ASCII alphabetic characters we know that there are 26<sup>7</sup> possible sequences that could be used. Knowing how many of these could be generated by a computer each minute would give me an idea of how long it would take to generate all possible hashes and crack a certain 7 character hash (<em>birthday attacks aside</em>).</p>
  
  <p>For example, taking the number above, if a modern quad core could generate 1 million hashes each minute it would take <code>8031810176 / 1000000 / 60 = 133.86</code> hours to find all possible hashes in that range.</p>
  
  <p>Also, how does the new Sandy Bridge Intel chips with native AES play into this?</p>