Question

I currently have an algorithm that hashes a key and checks for it’s uniqueness using map::count. How could this be optimized? I also forgot to mention that this is threaded.

int coll = 0;
map<long, bool> mymap;
#pragma omp parallel for
for (int i = 0; i < 256; i++)
  for (int j = 0; j < 256; j++)
    for (int k = 0; k < 256; k++)
    {
      string temp;
      temp = i;
      temp += j;
      temp += k;
      temp += temp;
      long myhash = hash(temp.c_str());

     if (mymap.count(myhash))
      {
        #pragma omp atomic
        coll++;
        cout << "Collision at " << i << " " << j << " " << k << endl;
      }
      else
      {
        #pragma omp critical
        mymap[myhash] = true;
      }
    }

cout << "Number of collisions: " << coll << endl;
cout << "Map size: " << mymap.size() << endl;

After much trial and error, here is the best version I could produce, generating 4294967296 keys in 82.5 seconds using 1GB of RAM.

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <signal.h>
#include <sys/time.h>
#include <iomanip>
#include <omp.h>
#include <vector>
#include <fstream>
#include <ios>
#include <unistd.h>
using namespace std;

class Timer 
{
private:
  timeval startTime;

public:

  void start()
  {
    gettimeofday(&startTime, NULL);
  }

  double stop()
  {
    timeval endTime;
    long seconds, useconds;
    double duration;

    gettimeofday(&endTime, NULL);

    seconds  = endTime.tv_sec  - startTime.tv_sec;
    useconds = endTime.tv_usec - startTime.tv_usec;

    duration = seconds + useconds/1000000.0;

    return duration;
  }

  static void printTime(double duration)
  {
    cout << setprecision(10) << fixed << duration << " seconds" << endl;
  }
};

static inline long hash(const char* str)
{
  return (*(long*)str)>> 0;
}  
int coll;
vector<bool> test;

void process_mem_usage(double& vm_usage, double& resident_set)
{
  using std::ios_base;
  using std::ifstream;
  using std::string;

  vm_usage     = 0.0;
  resident_set = 0.0;

  // 'file' stat seems to give the most reliable results
  //
  ifstream stat_stream("/proc/self/stat",ios_base::in);

  // dummy vars for leading entries in stat that we don't care about
  //
  string pid, comm, state, ppid, pgrp, session, tty_nr;
  string tpgid, flags, minflt, cminflt, majflt, cmajflt;
  string utime, stime, cutime, cstime, priority, nice;
  string O, itrealvalue, starttime;

  // the two fields we want
  //
  unsigned long vsize;
  long rss;

  stat_stream >> pid >> comm >> state >> ppid >> pgrp >> session >> tty_nr
          >> tpgid >> flags >> minflt >> cminflt >> majflt >> cmajflt
          >> utime >> stime >> cutime >> cstime >> priority >> nice
          >> O >> itrealvalue >> starttime >> vsize >> rss; // don't care about the rest

  stat_stream.close();

  long page_size_kb = sysconf(_SC_PAGE_SIZE) / 1024; // in case x86-64 is configured to use 2MB pages
  vm_usage     = vsize / 1024.0;
  resident_set = rss * page_size_kb;
}
Timer timer;
void signal_handlerkill(int sig)
{
  cout << "Number of collisions: " << coll << endl;
  //cout << test.size() << endl;
  double vm, rss;
  process_mem_usage(vm, rss);
  vm /= 1024.0;
  rss /= 1024.0;
  cout << "VM: " << vm << "MB" << endl;
  timer.printTime(timer.stop());
  exit(1);
}

int main()
{
  signal(SIGINT, signal_handlerkill);
  timer = Timer();
  timer.start();
  coll = 0;

  for (long i = 0; i < 4294967296+1; i++)
  {
    test.push_back(0); //Set up the vector
  }

  #pragma omp parallel for 
  for (int i = 0; i < 256; i++)
    for (int j = 0; j < 256; j++)
      for (int k = 0; k < 256; k++)
        for (int l = 0; l < 256; l++)
        {
          const char temp[4] = {i, j, k, l};
          long myhash = (*(long*)temp);

          if(test.at(myhash))
          {
            #pragma omp atomic
            coll++;
          }
          else
          {
            test[myhash].flip();
          }
        }

  cout << "Number of collisions: " << coll << endl;
  double vm, rss;
  process_mem_usage(vm, rss);
  vm /= 1024.0;
  rss /= 1024.0;
  cout << "VM: " << vm << "MB" << endl;
  timer.printTime(timer.stop());

  return 0;
}

Answer 1

In terms of space, you could use a set instead of a map, since the bool value is useless.

Also, if you’re using C++11, an unordered_set will probably give better performance.

Also,

temp = i;
temp += j;
temp += k;
temp += temp;

probably has a bigger overhead than using a stringstream or even char arrays.