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Building an Optimal Point-Location Structure in \(O( sort (n))\) I/Os

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Abstract

We revisit the problem of constructing an external memory data structure on a planar subdivision formed by n segments to answer point location queries optimally in \(O(\log _B n)\) I/Os. The objective is to achieve the I/O cost of \( sort (n) = O(\frac{n}{B} \log _{M/B} \frac{n}{B})\), where B is the number of words in a disk block, and M being the number of words in memory. The previous algorithms are able to achieve this either in expectation or under the tall cache assumption of \(M \ge B^2\). We present the first algorithm that solves the problem deterministically for all values of M and B satisfying \(M \ge 2B\).

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Notes

  1. In the original model formulation in [4], M can be as small as 2B. However, any algorithm that works on \(M = \mu B\) with constant \(\mu > 2\) can be adapted to work on \(M = 2B\) with only a constant blowup in space and I/O cost. For this purpose, it suffices to treat each block as \(\mu \) “micro-blocks”, each with \(B/\mu \) words. Each “logical I/O” now reads or writes a micro-block. A memory of 2B words can accommodate \(\mu B\) “micro-blocks”, plus B more words that can be used to perform the “physical I/Os” (which are still done in B words each). Whenever a logical I/O is needed on a micro-block, a physical I/O occurs on the block containing the micro-block. Hence, any algorithm with I/O complexity \(O( sort (n))\) under \(M = \mu B\) now incurs \(O(\frac{\mu n}{B} \log _\frac{\mu M}{B} \frac{\mu n}{B}) = O( sort (n))\) I/Os on \(M = 2B\).

  2. An \(\Omega (\log _B n)\) query lower bound can be established via a reduction from predecessor search [22].

  3. In particular, as pointed out in [12], the algorithm of [18] incurs \(O(n \log _B n)\) I/Os on a general \({\mathcal {S}}\).

  4. \(IL^*(B)\) is the number of times that we need to repeatedly apply \(\log ^*\) operation on B before the value becomes O(1).

  5. \(O_\epsilon \) hides a factor polynomial to \(1/\epsilon \).

  6. The structure solves a more general problem called approximate half-space counting in \(\mathbb {R}^3\).

  7. The algorithm of [1] is described with a default leaf capacity of B, but one can replace that with any \(\beta \in [B, \sqrt{MB}]\) without affecting the algorithm’s correctness. In fact, since what we need here is only the leaf level, the algorithm of [1] can be simplified considerably by ignoring all of its details on producing the non-leaf levels of a persistent B-tree.

  8. Suppose that we have a problem \(\Pi \) on an input set S. \(\Pi \) is decomposable if we can partition S into \(S_1, S_2, \ldots , S_\gamma \) such that, once we have the answer on each \(S_i\) (\(1 \le i \le \gamma \)), we can obtain the answer of S using \(O(\gamma )\) additional I/Os.

  9. A weaker insertion cost of \(O(\log _B^{\alpha +1} n)\) was claimed in [8]. However, it should be folklore that the cost can be easily improved to as we stated here (for readers familiar with the technique: by creating a structure on \(B, B^{1+\delta /2}, B^{1+\delta }, B^{1+3\delta /2}, \ldots \) elements, respectively).

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  1. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong

    Xiaocheng Hu, Cheng Sheng & Yufei Tao

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  1. Xiaocheng Hu
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  2. Cheng Sheng
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  3. Yufei Tao
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Correspondence to Yufei Tao.

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Hu, X., Sheng, C. & Tao, Y. Building an Optimal Point-Location Structure in \(O( sort (n))\) I/Os. Algorithmica 81, 1921–1937 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00453-018-0518-2

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