Skip to main content

Advertisement

Log in

A Framework for Simple Sorting Algorithms on Parallel Disk Systems

  • Published:
Theory of Computing Systems Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract.

In this paper we present a simple parallel sorting algorithm and illustrate its application in general sorting, disk sorting, and hypercube sorting. The algorithm (called the (l,m) -mergesort (LMM)) is an extension of the bitonic and odd—even mergesorts.

Literature on parallel sorting is abundant. Many of the algorithms proposed, though being theoretically important, may not perform satisfactorily in practice owing to large constants in their time bounds. The algorithm presented in this paper has the potential of being practical.

We present an application to the parallel disk sorting problem. The algorithm is asymptotically optimal (assuming that N is a polynomial in M , where N is the number of records to be sorted and M is the internal memory size). The underlying constant is very small. This algorithm performs better than the disk-striped mergesort (DSM) algorithm when the number of disks is large. Our implementation is as simple as that of DSM (requiring no fancy data structures or prefetch techniques.)

As a second application, we prove that we can get a sparse enumeration sort on the hypercube that is simpler than that of the classical algorithm of Nassimi and Sahni [16]. We also show that Leighton's columnsort algorithm is a special case of LMM.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Additional information

Online publication December 26, 2000.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Rajasekaran, S. A Framework for Simple Sorting Algorithms on Parallel Disk Systems . Theory Comput. Systems 34, 101–114 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1007/s002240010020

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s002240010020

Keywords