Fast Priority Queues for Cached Memory
Peter Sanders
Max Planck Institut for Computer Science
The cache hierarchy prevalent in to days high p erformance pro cessors has to b e taken into account
in order to design algorithms that p erform well in practice This pap er advocates the adaption
of external memory algorithms to this purp ose This idea and the practical issues involved are
exempli ed by engineering a fast priority queue suited to external memory and cached memory
that is based on k way merging It improves previous external memory algorithms by constant
factors crucial for transferring it to cached memory Running in the cache hierarchy of a worksta
tion the algorithm is at least two times faster than an optimized implementation of binary heaps
and ary heaps for large inputs
Categories and Sub ject Descriptors C Computer Systems Organization Single Data
Stream Architectures C Computer Systems Organization Performance of Systems E