How would you make this switch statement as fast as possible?

Question

2009-12-04 UPDATE: For profiling results on a number of the suggestions posted here, see below!

---

The Question

Consider the following very

Answer 1

I'd roll my own fast hash function and use an integer switch statement to avoid string comparisons:

int  h = 0;  

// Compute fast hash: A[0] + A[1]*0x100
if (ActivCode.Length > 0)
    h += (int) ActivCode[0];
if (ActivCode.Length > 1)
    h += (int) ActivCode[1] << 8;  

// Find a match
switch (h)
{
    case 0x0000:  return MarketDataExchange.NBBO;        // ""
    case 0x0041:  return MarketDataExchange.AMEX;        // "A"
    case 0x0042:  return MarketDataExchange.BSE;         // "B"
    case 0x5442:  return MarketDataExchange.BATS;        // "BT"
    case 0x0043:  return MarketDataExchange.NSE;         // "C"
    case 0x574D:  return MarketDataExchange.CHX;         // "MW"
    case 0x004E:  return MarketDataExchange.NYSE;        // "N"
    case 0x4150:  return MarketDataExchange.ARCA;        // "PA"
    case 0x0051:  return MarketDataExchange.NASDAQ;      // "Q"
    case 0x4451:  return MarketDataExchange.NASDAQ_ADF;  // "QD"
    case 0x0057:  return MarketDataExchange.CBOE;        // "W"
    case 0x0058:  return MarketDataExchange.PHLX;        // "X"
    case 0x0059:  return MarketDataExchange.DIRECTEDGE;  // "Y"
    default:      return MarketDataExchange.NONE;
}

My tests show that this is about 4.5 times faster than the original code.

If C# had a preprocessor, I'd use a macro to form the case constants.

This technique is faster than using a hash table and certainly faster than using string comparisons. It works for up to four-character strings with 32-bit ints, and up to 8 characters using 64-bit longs.