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Small-Rank Selection in Parallel, with Applications to Heap Construction

✍ Scribed by Paul F Dietz; Rajeev Raman


Publisher
Elsevier Science
Year
1999
Tongue
English
Weight
115 KB
Volume
30
Category
Article
ISSN
0196-6774

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✦ Synopsis


We study the parallel complexity of selecting the kth smallest of n elements Ž on the CRCW PRAM. We show that this problem can be solved in O log log n q . Ž. log krlog log n time and O n operations for all 1 F k F nr2, which is superior to existing deterministic bounds when k is small compared to n. A matching time lower bound is shown for all algorithms that use n or fewer processors to solve this problem. As an application of the selection result, we give an algorithm for Ž . permuting n items in an array into heap order on a CRCW PRAM in O log log n Ž . time and O n operations. By using randomization, the running time of this Ž . algorithm can be improved to O log log log n with high probability, still perform-Ž . Ž . ing O n operations. No PRAM algorithm with o log n run time was previously known for this problem. We also obtain improved algorithms for constructing k-bandwidth heaps and min-path heaps.