[jandrewrogers]

A simple linear probe is very efficient if the hash quality is high enough. More complex hash tables have the useful property that their performance is less sensitive to lower hash quality.

Historically, the computational cost of excellent hash quality was too high, so the overall cost of a hash table was lower using a worse hash and more complex table design. Today, it is possible to generate high quality hashes with minimal computational cost, so complex hash table designs are less useful. Modern hash table performance can largely be reduced to the average number of cache lines (both data and instruction) touched by the operations.