We show that a unit-cost RAM with a word length of w bits can sort n integers in the range 0 : : 2 w \Gamma1 in O(n log log n) time, for arbitrary w log n, a significant improvement over the bound of O(n p log n) achieved by the fusion trees of Fredman and Willard. Provided that w (log n) 2+ffl for some fixed ffl ? 0, the sorting can even be accomplished in linear expected time with a randomized algorithm. Both of our algorithms parallelize without loss on a unit-cost PRAM with a word length of w bits. The first one yields an algorithm that uses O(logn) time and O(n log log n) operations on a deterministic CRCW PRAM. The second one yields an algorithm that uses O(log n) expected time and O(n) expected operations on a randomized EREW PRAM, provided that w (log n) 2+ffl for some fixed ffl ? 0. Our deterministic and randomized sequential and parallel algorithms generalize to the lexicographic sorting problem of sorting multiple-precision integers represented in several words. ...

Priority queues are some of the most fundamental data structures. They are used directly for, say, task scheduling in operating systems. Moreover, they are essential to greedy algorithms. We study the complexity of priority queue operations on a RAM with arbitrary word size. We present exponential improvements over previous bounds, and we show tight relations to sorting. Our first result is a RAM priority queue supporting insert and extract-min operations in worst case time O(log log n) where n is the current number of keys in the queue. This is an exponential improvement over the O( p log n) bound of Fredman and Willard from STOC'90. Our algorithm is simple, and it only uses AC 0 operations, meaning that there is no hidden time dependency on the word size. Plugging this priority queue into Dijkstra's algorithm gives an O(m log log m) algorithm for the single source shortest path problem on a graph with m edges, as compared with the previous O(m p log m) bound based on Fredman...

We show that n integers in the range 1 : : n can be sorted stably on an EREW PRAM using O(t) time and O(n( p log n log log n + (log n) 2 =t)) operations, for arbitrary given t log n log log n, and on a CREW PRAM using O(t) time and O(n( p log n + log n=2 t=logn )) operations, for arbitrary given t log n. In addition, we are able to sort n arbitrary integers on a randomized CREW PRAM within the same resource bounds with high probability. In each case our algorithm is a factor of almost \Theta( p log n) closer to optimality than all previous algorithms for the stated problem in the stated model, and our third result matches the operation count of the best previous sequential algorithm. We also show that n integers in the range 1 : : m can be sorted in O((log n) 2 ) time with O(n) operations on an EREW PRAM using a nonstandard word length of O(log n log log n log m) bits, thereby greatly improving the upper bound on the word length necessary to sort integers with a linear t...

We present new improved algorithms for the sorting problem. The algorithms are not only efficient but also clear and simple. First, we introduce Forward Radix Sort which combines the advantages of traditional left-to-right and right-to-left radix sort in a simple manner. We argue that this algorithm will work very well in practice. Adding a preprocessing step, we obtain an algorithm with attractive theoretical properties. For example, n binary strings can be sorted in \Theta i n log i B n log n + 2 jj time, where B is the minimum number of bits that have to be inspected to distinguish the strings. This is an improvement over the previously best known result by Paige and Tarjan. The complexity may also be expressed in terms of H, the entropy of the input: n strings from a stationary ergodic process can be sorted in \Theta \Gamma n log \Gamma 1 H + 1 \Delta\Delta time, an improvement over the result recently presented by Chen and Reif.

The problem of sorting n integers from a restricted range [1::m], where m is superpolynomial in n, is considered. An o(n log n) randomized algorithm is given. Our algorithm takes O(n log log m) expected time and O(n) space. (Thus, for m = n polylog(n) we have an O(n log log n) algorithm.) The algorithm is parallelizable. The resulting parallel algorithm achieves optimal speed up. Some features of the algorithm make us believe that it is relevant for practical applications. A result of independent interest is a parallel hashing technique. The expected construction time is logarithmic using an optimal number of processors, and searching for a value takes O(1) time in the worst case. This technique enables drastic reduction of space requirements for the price of using randomness. Applicability of the technique is demonstrated for the parallel sorting algorithm, and for some parallel string matching algorithms. The parallel sorting algorithm is designed for a strong and non standard mo...

We prove super-linear lower bounds for some shortest path problems in directed graphs, where no such bounds were previously known. The central problem in our study is the replacement paths problem: Given a directed graph G with non-negative edge weights, and a shortest path P = {e_1, e_2, ..., e_p} between two nodes s and t, compute the shortest path distances from s to t in each of the p graphs obtained from G by deleting one of the edges e_i. We show that the replacement paths problem requires Ω(m√n) time in the worst case whenever m = O(n√n). This also establishes a similar...

In this paper we introduce the notion of approximate data structures, in which a small amount of error is tolerated in the output. Approximate data structures trade error of approximation for faster operation, leading to theoretical and practical speedups for a wide variety of algorithms. We give approximate variants of the van Emde Boas data structure, which support the same dynamic operations as the standard van Emde Boas data structure [28, 20], except that answers to queries are approximate. The variants support all operations in constant time provided the error of approximation is 1/polylog(n), and in O(loglog n) time provided the error is 1/polynomial(n), for n elements in the data structure. We consider

Abstract. We present a streaming algorithm for constructing sparse spanners and show that our algorithm out-performs significantly the state-of-the-art algorithm for this task [20]. Specifically, the processing time-per-edge of our algorithm is drastically smaller than that of the algorithm of [20], and all other efficiency parameters of our algorithm are no greater (and some of them are strictly smaller) than the respective parameters for the state-of-the-art algorithm. We also devise a fully dynamic centralized algorithm maintaining sparse spanners. This algorithm has a very small incremental update time, and a non-trivial decremental update time. To our knowledge, this is the first fully dynamic centralized algorithm for maintaining sparse spanners that provides non-trivial bounds on both incremental and decremental update time for a wide range of stretch parameter t. 1

We present several results about Delaunay triangulations (DTs) and convex hulls in transdichotomous and hereditary settings: (i) the DT of a planar point set can be computed in expected time O(sort(n)) on a word RAM, where sort(n) is the time to sort n numbers. We assume that the word RAM supports the shuffle-operation in constant time; (ii) if we know the ordering of a planar point set in x- and in y-direction, its DT can be found by a randomized algebraic computation tree of expected linear depth; (iii) given a universe U of points in the plane, we construct a data structure D for Delaunay queries: for any P ⊆ U, D can find the DT of P in time O(|P | log log |U|); (iv) given a universe U of points in 3-space in general convex position, there is a data structure D for convex hull queries: for any P ⊆ U, D can find the convex hull of P in time O(|P |(log log |U|) 2); (v) given a convex polytope in 3-space with n vertices which are colored with χ> 2 colors, we can split it into the convex hulls of the individual color classes in time O(n(log log n) 2). The results (i)–(iii) generalize to higher dimensions. We need a wide range of techniques. Most prominently, we describe a reduction from DTs to nearest-neighbor graphs that relies on a new variant of randomized incremental constructions using dependent sampling.

When can we sort in o(n log n) time? Amir M. Ben-Amram*