https://probablydance.com/2018/05/28/a-new-fast-hash-table-in-response-to-googles-new-fast-hash-table/ >Hi, I wrote my new favorite hash table. This came about because last year I wrote the fastest hash table (I still make that claim) and this year one of the organizers of the C++Now conference asked me to give a talk. My problem was that Google had also announced a new fast hash table last year, and I wasn’t sure if mine would compare well against theirs. >The main benefit of Google’s hash table over mine was that Google’s has less memory overhead: It has a higher max_load_factor (meaning how full can the table get before it grows to a bigger array) and it has only 1 byte overhead per entry, where the overhead of my table depended on the alignment of your data. (if your data is 8 byte aligned, you’ll have 8 bytes overhead)