Match alphanumeric patterns in a stream

Given a reference 7–8 character alphanumeric code and four candidate codes, select the exact match as quickly as possible. Design a system that:

• Efficiently determines whether any candidate exactly matches the reference (consider case sensitivity and lookalike characters such as O/0 and I/ 1).
• Supports a streaming setting where batches arrive at increasing rates and latency must remain low.
• Handles input noise (e.g., OCR errors) by optionally allowing a configurable Hamming distance threshold without compromising throughput. Discuss your data structures (e.g., hashing, tries, SIMD-friendly encodings), algorithmic choices, complexity, and how you would benchmark and scale this for high QPS.