Quick question: are there special hash functions that are optimized for use in hash tables? Or do typical hash table implementations in e.g. Python just use standard hash functions like MD5?
Edit: It's 100% clear now. Thanks for the great answers everyone!
Good question! Yes. Here’s an example: http://cyan4973.github.io/xxHash/
There's also FarmHash, whose 32-bit version is 2x as fast as xxHash on little endian machines (at least according to this benchmark suite https://github.com/rurban/smhasher).