Techniques are provided for configuring and operating hardware to sustain real-time hashing throughput. In an embodiment, during a first set of clock cycles, a particular amount of data items of a first data column are transferred into multiple hash lanes. During a second set of clock cycles, the same particular amount of data items of a second data column are transferred into the hash lanes. The transferred data items of the first and second data columns are then processed to calculate a set of hash values. When combined with techniques such as pipelining and horizontal scaling, the loading, hashing, and other processing occur in real time at the full speed of the underlying data path. For example, hashing throughput may sustainably equal or exceed the throughput of main memory.