On Sorting, Heaps, and Minimum Spanning Trees

Let A be a set of size m. Obtaining the first k m elements of A in ascending order can be done in optimal O(m + k log k) time. We present Incremental Quicksort (IQS), an algorithm (online on k) which incrementally gives the next smallest element of the set, so that the first k elements are obtained in optimal expected time for any k. Based on IQS, we present the Quickheap (QH), a simple and efficient priority queue for main and secondary memory. Quickheaps are comparable with classical binary heaps in simplicity, yet are more cache-friendly. This makes them an excellent alternative for a secondary memory implementation. We show that the expected amortized CPU cost per operation over a Quickheap of m elements is O(log m), and this translates into O((1/B) log(m/M)) I/O cost with main memory size M and block size B, in a cache-oblivious fashion. As a direct application, we use our techniques to implement classical Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) algorithms. We use IQS to implement Kruskal&#...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: ALGORITHMICA
• Authors: Gonzalo Navarro, Rodrigo Paredes
• Keywords: ALGORITHMICA 2010, Efficient Priority Queue, Optimal Expected Time, Secondary Memory