I am somewhat surprised to see the bucket memory layout which is: [k1/v1],[k2,v2],[k3/v3] etc. where k1,k2,k3 are keys and v1,v2,v3 are values. The CPU cache will not contain more than one [k,v] pair - because the CPU cache line is about 64 bytes and the size of [k,v] pair was about 56 bytes.

So iterating through the bucket looking for a key will require each iteration to fetch the next [k,v] pair from RAM.

Compare this with the following layout: k1,k2,k3,… followed by v1,v2,v3. Looking up the first key in the bucket will end up loading at least one more key in the CPU cache-line. And this should make iterations faster.

The downside of this approach is if the lookup almost all the time results in the first key in the bucket. Then [k1,v1],[k2,v2],k3,v3] packing is better-because the value is also in the CPU cache line .

I am wondering if people on this forum knowvmore about this trade-off. Thanks!!