We present a simple dictionary with worst case constant lookup time, equaling the theoretical performance of the classic dynamic perfect hashing scheme of Dietzfelbinger et al. (Dynamic perfect hashing: Upper and lower bounds. SIAM J. Comput., 23(4):738–761, 1994). The space usage is similar to that of binary search trees, i.e., three words per key on average. Besides being conceptually much simpler than previous dynamic dictionaries with worst case constant lookup time, our data structure is interesting in that it does not use perfect hashing, but rather a variant of open addressing where keys can be moved back in their probe sequences. An implementation inspired by our algorithm, but using weaker hash functions, is found to be quite practical. It is competitive with the best known dictionaries having an average case (but no nontrivial worst case) guarantee. Key Words: data structures, dictionaries, information retrieval, searching, hashing, experiments * Partially supported by the Future and Emerging Technologies programme of the EU

We generalize Cuckoo Hashing [23] to d-ary Cuckoo Hashing and show how this yields a simple hash table data structure that stores n elements in (1 + ffl) n memory cells, for any constant ffl ? 0. Assuming uniform hashing, accessing or deleting table entries takes at most d = O(ln ffl ) probes and the expected amortized insertion time is constant. This is the first dictionary that has worst case constant access time and expected constant update time, works with (1 + ffl) n space, and supports satellite information. Experiments indicate that d = 4 choices suffice for ffl 0:03. We also describe variants of the data structure that allow the use of hash functions that can be evaluted in constant time.

Hashing with linear probing dates back to the 1950s, and is among the most studied algorithms. In recent years it has become one of the most important hash table organizations since it uses the cache of modern computers very well. Unfortunately, previous analyses rely either on complicated and space consuming hash functions, or on the unrealistic assumption of free access to a truly random hash function. Already Carter and Wegman, in their seminal paper on universal hashing, raised the question of extending their analysis to linear probing. However, we show in this paper that linear probing using a pairwise independent family may have expected logarithmic cost per operation. On the positive side, we show that 5-wise independence is enough to ensure constant expected time per operation. This resolves the question of finding a space and time efficient hash function that provably ensures good performance for linear probing.

With the gaining popularity of remote storage (e.g. in the Cloud), we consider the setting where a small, protected local machine wishes to access data on a large, untrusted remote machine. This setting was introduced in the RAM model in the context of software protection by Goldreich and Ostrovsky. A secure Oblivious RAM simulation allows for a client, with small (e.g., constant size) protected memory, to hide not only the data but also the sequence of locations it accesses (both reads and writes) in the unprotected memory of size n. Our main results are as follows: • We analyze several schemes from the literature, observing a repeated design flaw that leaks information on the memory access pattern. For some of these schemes, the leakage is actually non-negligible, while for others it is negligible. • On the positive side, we present a new secure oblivious RAM scheme, extending a recent scheme by Goodrich and Mitzenmacher. Our scheme uses only O(1) local memory, and its (amortized) overhead is O(log 2 n / log log n), outperforming the previously-best O(log 2 n) overhead (among schemes where the client only uses O(1) additional local memory).

We can represent an array of n values from {0, 1, 2} using ⌈n log 2 3 ⌉ bits (arithmetic coding), but then we cannot retrieve a single element efficiently. Instead, we can encode every block of t elements using ⌈t log 2 3 ⌉ bits, and bound the retrieval time by t. This gives a linear trade-off between the redundancy of the representation and the query time. In fact, this type of linear trade-off is ubiquitous in known succinct data structures, and in data compression. The folk wisdom is that if we want to waste one bit per block, the encoding is so constrained that it cannot help the query in any way. Thus, the only thing a query can do is to read the entire block and unpack it. We break this limitation and show how to use recursion to improve redundancy. It turns out that if a block is encoded with two (!) bits of redundancy, we can decode a single element, and answer many other interesting queries, in time logarithmic in the block size. Our technique allows us to revisit classic problems in succinct data structures, and give surprising new upper bounds. We also construct a locally-decodable version of arithmetic coding.

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