Fast universal hashing with small keys and no preprocessing: The polyR construction

Abstract

We describe a universal hash-function family, PolyR, which hashes messages of effectively arbitrary lengths in 3.9-6.9 cycles/byte (cpb) on a Pentium II (achieving a collision probability in the range 2−16-2−50). Unlike most proposals, PolyR actually hashes short messages faster (per byte) than long ones. At the same time, its key is only a few bytes, the output is only a few bytes, and no “preprocessing” is needed to achieve maximal efficiency. Our designs have been strongly influenced by low-level considerations relevant to software speed, and experimental results are given throughout.