The Power of 1 + α for Memory-Efficient Bloom Filters

Abstract

This paper presents a cache-aware Bloom-filter algorithm with improved cache behavior and lower false-positive rates compared to prior work. The algorithm relies on the power-of-two choice principle to provide a better distribution of set elements in a blocked Bloom filter. Instead of choosing a single block, we insert new elements into the less-loaded of two blocks to achieve a low false-positive rate while performing only two memory accesses on each insert or query operation. The paper also discusses an optimization technique to balance cache effectiveness with the false-positive rate to fine-tune the Bloom-filter properties.