Abstract
Sorting a list of input numbers is one of the most fundamental problems in the field of computer science in general and high-throughput database applications in particular. Although literature abounds with various flavors of sorting algorithms, different architectures call for customized implementations to achieve faster sorting times. This paper presents an efficient implementation and detailed analysis of MergeSort on current CPU architectures. Our SIMD implementation with 128-bit SSE is 3.3X faster than the scalar version. In addition, our algorithm performs an efficient multiway merge, and is not constrained by the memory bandwidth. Our multi-threaded, SIMD implementation sorts 64 million floating point numbers in less than 0.5 seconds on a commodity 4-core Intel processor. This measured performance compares favorably with all previously published results. Additionally, the paper demonstrates performance scalability of the proposed sorting algorithm with respect to certain salient architectural features of modern chip multiprocessor (CMP) architectures, including SIMD width and core-count. Based on our analytical models of various architectural configurations, we see excellent scalability of our implementation with SIMD width scaling up to 16X wider than current SSE width of 128-bits, and CMP core-count scaling well beyond 32 cores. Cycle-accurate simulation of Intel's upcoming x86 many-core Larrabee architecture confirms scalability of our proposed algorithm.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.