Is there a way to speed up password hashing?

Question

I am setting up a system that migrates users from an external source and have determined the most time expensive part is when the UsersService _setPasswordOnUserRecord method hashes the password

$hash = craft()->security->hashPassword($user->newPassword);

This is taking about 2 secs where the rest of the operation for saving a user is about .2 sec. There are close to 10k users to it's really adding up! Is there any way to use a faster type of hash or bypass the hashing, or am I out of luck?

example:

    $user = new UserModel;

    $user->firstName    = "First";
    $user->lastName     = 'last';
    $user->newPassword  = '123456';
    $user->email        = 'email@email.com';
    $user->username     = 'username';




    $wasSaved = craft()->users->saveUser($user);

Answer 1

There is a general config setting for this:

https://craftcms.com/docs/config-settings#blowfishHashCost

Setting this to the minimum value:

'blowfishHashCost' => 4

made the hashing time negligible.