Almost random graphs with simple hash functions

We describe a simple randomized construction for generating pairs of hash functions h 1 ,h 2 from a universe U to ranges V = [m] = (0,1,...,m-1) and W = [m] so that for every key set S ⊆ U with n = |S| ≤ m/(1 + ε) the (random) bipartite (multi)graph with node set V ∪ W and edge set (h 1 (x),h 2 (x))| x ∈ S exhibits a structure that is essentially random. The construction combines d-wise independent classes for d a relatively small constant with the well-known technique of random offsets. While keeping the space needed to store the description of h 1 and h 2 at O(n ζ ), for ζ < 1 fixed arbitrarily, we obtain a much smaller (constant) evaluation time than previous constructions of this kind, which involved Siegel's high-performance hash classes. The main new technique is the combined analysis of the graph structure and the inner structure of the hash functions, as well as a new way of looking at the cycle structure of random (multi)graphs. The construction may be applied to improve on Pagh and Rodler's "cuckoo hashing" (2001), to obtain a simpler and faster alternative to a recent construction of Ostlin and Pagh (2002/03) for simulating uniform hashing on a key set S, and to the simulation of shared memory on distributed memory machines. We also describe a novel way of implementing (approximate) d-wise independent hashing without using polynomials.

Authors

• Martin Dietzfelbinger
• Philipp Woelfel

Keywords

• cuckoo hashing
• hash function
• random graphs
• uniform hashing