[fstanis]

IIUC, SHA-3 isn't actually better in any known way, it's just meant to be a vastly different algorithm so we'd have an alternative to the other ones.

[15155]

SHA-3 doesn't use addition: from a hardware implementation standpoint this is a huge, huge advantage because there's no carry propagation delay.

SHA-3 is by far and away the most elegant modern cryptographic hash algorithm.

[LawTalkingGuy]

It's conceptually a lot different not just internally but in that it's equivalent to an automatically finalized hash and could eliminate a class of accidental misuse.

[Taek]

sha3 is a lot more power efficient when implemented in hardware, which is nice when you have an IoT device that needs to do a lot of hashing.

It will also be really nice on amd_64 CPUs for doing large amounts of hashing if they ever get a sha3 instruction.

That said, hashing is rarely your bottleneck so there's not much urgency.