"Optimizing Data Storage: Finding the Perfect Balance"
Originally Published 1 year ago — by Quanta Magazine
After 70 years, computer scientists have mathematically proven the optimal trade-off between time and space efficiency for hash tables, a fundamental data structure in computer science. Two recent papers presented a groundbreaking hash table design that achieves the best combination of time and space efficiency yet conceived. This invention sets a new upper bound for the most efficient hash tables, and a subsequent team proved that it was as efficient as any data structure could possibly be. Despite its unprecedented efficiency, the complexity of constructing this hash table means it's unlikely to be built anytime soon, but it has opened up new possibilities for related problems in theoretical computer science.