Data parallel sorting for particle simulation

Journal Article · Fri May 01 04:00:00 EDT 1992 · Concurrency. Practice and Experience; (United Kingdom)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1002/cpe.4330040304· OSTI ID:6726397

Dagum, L ^[1]

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1. NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA (United States)

Sorting on a parallel architecture is a communications intensive event which can incur a high penalty in applications where it is required. In the case of particle simulation, only integer sorting is necessary, and sequential implementations easily attain the minimum performance bound of O (N) for N particles. Parallel implementations, however, have to cope with the parallel sorting problem which, in addition to incurring a heavy communications cost, can make the minimun performance bound difficult to attain. This paper demonstrates how the sorting problem in a particle simulation can be reduced to a merging problem, and describes an efficient data parallel algorithm to solve this merging problem in a particle simulation. The new algorithm is shown to be optimal under conditions usual for particle simulation, and its fieldwise implementation on the Connection Machine is analyzed in detail. The new algorithm is about four times faster than a fieldwise implementation of radix sort on the Connection Machine.

• Research Organization: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Moffett Field, CA (United States). Ames Research Center
• OSTI ID: 6726397
• Journal Information: Concurrency. Practice and Experience; (United Kingdom), Journal Name: Concurrency. Practice and Experience; (United Kingdom) Vol. 4:3; ISSN CPEXEI
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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