Is it possible to create a Minimal Perfect Hash function without a separate lookup table for a small (<64) set of keys?

Question

I recently read this article Throw away the keys: Easy, Minimal Perfect Hashing about generating a minimal perfect hash table for a known set of keys.

The article seems to assume that you need an intermediate table. Is there any other, simpler way to generate such a function if we assume that the set of keys is small (i.e. < 64).

In my case, I want to map a set of thread ID:s to a unique block of data within an array. The threads are started before the hash function is generated and stay constant during the running time of the program. The exact number of threads vary but stays fixed during the runtime of the program:

unsigned int thread_ids*;
unsigned int thread_count;
struct {
    /* Some thread specific data */
}* ThreadData;

int start_threads () {
    /* Code which starts the threads and allocates the threaddata. */
}

int f(thread_id) {
    /* return unique index into threadData */
}

int main() {
    thread_count = 64; /* This number will be small, e.g. < 64 */
    start_threads();
    ThreadData[f(thread_ids[0])]
}

Answer 1

You could build a perfect hash as follows, using a brute-force search. For 64 entries, the size of the target array needs to be at least 512 entries, otherwise search won't find an index within reasonable time.

The perfect hash function is then murmur(x + perfectHashIndex) & (TARGET_SIZE - 1)

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdint.h>
#include <string.h>

static uint64_t murmur64(uint64_t h) {
    h ^= h >> 33;
    h *= UINT64_C(0xff51afd7ed558ccd);
    h ^= h >> 33;
    h *= UINT64_C(0xc4ceb9fe1a85ec53);
    h ^= h >> 33;
    return h;
}

// must be a power of 2
#define TARGET_SIZE 512

static uint64_t findPerfectHashIndex(uint64_t *array, int size) {
    uint64_t used[TARGET_SIZE / 64];
    for (uint64_t index = 0; index < 1000;) {
        memset(used, 0, TARGET_SIZE / 64 * sizeof(uint64_t));
        for (size_t i = 0; i < size; i++) {
            uint64_t x = murmur64(array[i] + index) & (TARGET_SIZE - 1);
            if (((used[x >> 6] >> (x & 63)) & 1) != 0) {
                goto outer;
            }
            used[x >> 6] |= 1UL << (x & 63);
        }
        return index;
        outer:
        index++;
    }
    // not found
    return -1;
}

int main() {
    int size = 64;
    uint64_t ids[size];
    for(int i=0; i<size; i++) ids[i] = 10 * i;
    uint64_t perfectHashIndex = findPerfectHashIndex(ids, size);
    if (perfectHashIndex == -1) {
        printf("perfectHashIndex not found\n");
    } else {
        printf("perfectHashIndex = %lld\n", perfectHashIndex);
        for(int i=0; i<size; i++) {
            printf("  x[%d] = %lld, murmur(x + perfectHashIndex) & (TARGET_SIZE - 1) = %d\n", 
                i, ids[i], murmur64(ids[i] + perfectHashIndex) & (TARGET_SIZE - 1));
        }
    }
}