this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
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293
A young computer scientist and two colleagues show that searches within data structures called hash tables can be much faster than previously deemed possible. (www.quantamagazine.org)
submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Here's a link to the paper "Tiny Pointers" https://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.12800 those editors at Quantamagazine writes their summary in a strange fashion, for instance using x in stead of n which is normally used in computer science when talking about big O notation.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 19 hours ago

In the article, x is not the size of the hash table, it is the inverse of the table’s filling fraction. A 1000-element table that is 90% full has x=10, N=1000.

Since they’re not discussing scaling of data sizes, would be confusing to use O(N) notation or people would make that assumption.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This is the paper the article is about: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2501.02305

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

You are correct it's an confusing article Quantamagazine have written, why do they start highlighting "Tiny Pointers" https://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.12800 when "Optimal Bounds for Open Addressing Without Reordering" https://arxiv.org/pdf/2501.02305 is the main paper, and it disproves part of Tiny Pointers.