A computer scientist beat textbook binary search by more than 2x

A computer scientist beat textbook binary search by more than 2x Ellsworth Toohey 3:57 pm Thu Apr 30, 2026 Boing Boing / Google Gemini Binary search is the page-flipping trick everyone learns in their first programming class: to find a word in a sorted list, look at the middle, decide whether your target is in the top or bottom half, and repeat. It has been considered close to optimal since the 1940s. Computer scientist Daniel Lemire, who specializes in fast algorithms, just published benchmarks showing he can beat it by more than 2x on both Apple and Intel chips. The trick is that modern processors are nothing like the imaginary computers that textbook algorithms were designed for.

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