Faster than binary search for ordered list

Question

is there an algorithm that is faster than binary search, for searching in sorted values of array?

in my case, I have a sorted values (could be any type values) in an

Answer 1

Although in the general case you cannot do better than O(log N), you can at least optimize that, thus significantly reducing the constant of proportionality in front of O(log N).

If you have to perform multiple search on the same array, these can be vectorized using SIMD extensions, thus further cutting down on computation cost.

In particular, if you are dealing with arrays of floating point numbers which satisfy certain properties, than there are ways to construct a special index which then allows to search the array in O(1).

All of the above aspects are discussed with test results in: Cannizzo, 2015, Fast and Vectorizable Alternative to Binary Search in O(1) Applicable to a Wide Domain of Sorted Arrays of Floating Point Numbers The paper comes with source code on github.