Number : WUCSE-2003-15 2003-03-18 Hash Tables for Embedded and Real-time systems

Common collection objects such as hash tables are included in modern runtime libraries because of their widespread use and efficient implementation. While operating systems and programming languages continue to improve their real-time features, common implementations of hash tables and other collection objects are not necessarily suitable for real-time or embedded-systems. In this paper, we present an algorithm for managing hash tables that is suitable for such systems. The algorithm has been implemented and deployed in place of Java’s Hashtable class. We present evidence of the algorithm’s performance, experimental results documenting our algorithm’s suitability for real-time, and lessons learned from migrating this data structure to real-time and embedded platforms. Sponsored by DARPA under contract F33615–00–C–1697; contact author cytron@cs.wustl.edu This work was done while this author was on sabbatical from the EECS Department, University of Kansas