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Abstract : |
We consider the problem of external sorting in a shared-nothing multiprocessor. A critical step in the algorithms we consider is to determine the range of sort keys to be handled by each processor. We consider two techniques for determining these ranges of sort keys: exact splitting, using a parallel version of the algorithm proposed by Iyer, Ricard, and Varman; and probabilistic splitting, which uses sampling to estimate quantiles. We present analytic results showing that probabilistic splitting performs better than exact splitting. Finally, we present experimental results from an implementation of sorting via probabilistic splitting in the Gamma parallel database machine. 1, |
