Daniel-Constantin Mierla wrote:
On 26.08.2009 17:14 Uhr, Alex Balashov wrote:
Daniel-Constantin Mierla wrote:
just to be sure everyone got it right regarding the size attribute in htable parameter ... the number of slots for hash table is 2^size (2 power size). So, size=4 means that the hash table has 16 slots.
Reason for that is the speed in getting the slot number - modulo function is very fast in such cases, the slot number being actually a bitwise operation: hash_value & (2^size - 1) --- 2^size is cached at startup.
Thanks, that was a much-needed clarification omitted from my explanation.
I have always been told that table sizes that are prime numbers result in better distribution of factors due to the way modulo works, although I am not a mathematician and don't have a ready understanding of why. Is this true? Is there some reason you did not take this approach? Is hash_value & 2(^size - 1) equally fast?
not a mathematician myself and havent tried the approach with prime numbers. The fair distribution is (attempted to be) ensured by the hash functions. They exist for long time in ser/openser, iirc, Andrei Pelinescu implemented them (with some improvements in SR) and he tested to get a fair distribution for strings, SIP addresses (being used in location table as well).
I did tests as well, mainly for location and under heavy load the (max - min) was in average less than 10% of max, which is good.
I suppose the key is, as always, a hash function that produces radically different results even for very cosmetically similar data, much like MD5 /CRC32/etc. does.