Engineering a Sorted List Data Structure for 32 Bit Key

Search tree data structures like van Emde Boas trees are a theoretically attractive alternative to comparison based search trees because they have better asymptotic performance for small integer keys and large inputs. This paper studies their practicability using 32 bit keys as an example. While direct implementations of van Emde Boas trees cannot compete with good implementations of comparison based data structures, our tuned data structure significantly outperforms comparison based implementations for searching and shows at least comparable performance for insertion and deletion