Why we need ConcurrentHashMap when we already had Hashtable ?

Hashtable provides concurrent access to the Map.Entries objects by locking the entire map to perform any sort of operation (update,delete,read,create). Suppose we have a web application , the overhead created by Hashtable  (locking the entire map) can be ignored under normal load. But under heavy load , the overhead of locking the entire map may prove fatal and may lead to delay response time and   overtaxing of the server.

  

This  is where ConcurrentHashMap comes to rescue. ConcurrentHashMap class is fully interoperable with Hashtable in programs that rely on its thread safety but not on its synchronization details. So the main purpose of this class is to provide the same functionality as of Hashtable but with a performance comparable to HashMap.