A technique efficiently searches a
hash table. Conventionally, a predetermined set of “signature” information is hashed to generate a hash-table index which, in turn, is associated with a corresponding
linked list accessible through the
hash table. The indexed
list is sequentially searched, beginning with the first
list entry, until a “matching”
list entry is located containing the signature information. For long list lengths, this conventional approach may search a substantially large number of list entries. In contrast, the inventive technique reduces, on average, the number of list entries that are searched to locate the matching list entry. To that end, list entries are partitioned into different groups within each
linked list. Thus, by searching only a selected group (e.g., subset) of entries in the indexed list, the technique consumes fewer resources, such as processor bandwidth and
processing time, than previous implementations.