Sorting in mesh connected multiprocessors

A sorting algorithm, dubbed MeshSort, for multidimensional mesh-connected multiprocessors is introduced. Bitonic Sort and ShearSort are shown to be special cases of MeshSort. MeshSort thus provides some insight into the operation of parallel sorting. It requires operations only along orthogonal vectors of processors, simplifying the control of the multiprocessor. This allows MeshSort to be used on any reduced architecture where a multidimensional memory structure is interconnected with a lower dimensional structure of processors. A modified version of MeshSort, called FastMeshSort, is presented. This algorithm applies the same basic principle as MeshSort, and is almost as simple to implement, but achieves much better performance. The modified algorithm is shown to be very efficient for reasonably sized meshes. FastMeshSort is presented as a practical sorting and routing algorithm for real multidimensional mesh-connected multiprocessors. The algorithms can easily be extended to other multiprocessor structures