[Python-Dev] The Dictionary Gem is polished!

[Christian Tismer]

"M.-A. Lemburg" wrote:
> 
> > Here some results, dictionaries have 1000 entries:
> >
> > timing for strings              old=  5.097 new= 5.088
> > timing for bad integers (<<10)  old=101.540 new=12.610
> > timing for bad integers (<<16)  old=571.210 new=19.220
> 
> Even though I think concentrating on string keys would provide more
> performance boost for Python in general, I think you have a point
> there. +1 from here.
> 
> BTW, would changing the hash function on strings from the simple
> XOR scheme to something a little smarter help improve the performance
> too (e.g. most strings used in programming never use the 8-th
> bit) ?

Yes, it would. I spent the rest of last night to do more
accurate tests, also refined the implementation (using
longs for the shifts etc), and turned from timing over to
trip counting, i.e. a dict counts every round through the
re-hash. That showed two things:
- The bits used from the string hash are not well distributed
- using a "warmup wheel" on the hash to suck all bits in
  gives the same quality of hashes like random numbers.

I will publish some results later today.

> I also think that we could inline the string compare function
> in dictobject:lookdict_string to achieve even better performance.
> Currently it uses a function which doesn't trigger compiler
> inlining.

Sure!

ciao - chris

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