This is a re-print of my Dr. Dobb’s article from April of 2012. The original article used to be available: https://www.drdobbs.com/parallel/benchmarking-block-swapping-algorithms/232900395 It is still available https://web.archive.org/web/20130130063936/http://www.drdobbs.com/parallel/benchmarking-block-swapping-algorithms/232900395 Below is the recreated version, with code fixes to one of the algorithms. Swapping two elements within an array quickly is simple, requiring a single temporary storage element. Swapping […]

Read more "Benchmarking Block Swapping Algorithms"

Merge Sort was invented by John von Neumann in 1945. Many implementations have been shown in books and on the internet. However, in-place implementations have been difficult to accomplish, due to the need for an in-place merge, which only recently became available in standard C++, and is not available in other languages. In this blog, […]

Read more "Two Simple Sorting Algorithms"

This is a re-post of my 2012 article in Dr. Dobb’s Journal, that is still available through the amazing WayBackMachine web archive. In my article on parallel merge, I developed and optimized a generic parallel merge algorithm. It utilized multiple CPU cores and scaled well in performance. The algorithm was stable, leading directly to Parallel Merge Sort. […]

Read more "Parallel In-Place Merge"

Computing an average or two numbers seems simple and innocent enough of an operation. Here is an example from an Algorithms text book: int m = (a+b) / 2 where a and b are also int’s, which are signed 32-bit values on most computers. This code seems innocent enough: add two integers, divide by two, […]

Read more "Average Fun"

In my previous blog https://duvanenko.tech.blog/2020/02/03/faster-c-sorting/ I benchmarked standard C++ Sort algorithm on a single core at 11 Million 32-bit integers per second. Parallel C++ Sort runs at 93 Million integers per second on a 48-core Xeon CPU on AWS. I also benchmarked Parallel Merge Sort on the same machine, which reaches over 600 Million integers […]

Read more "Giga Sort – Sorting at 10X Faster Than C++ Parallel Sort"

Functional programming paradigm has infiltrated every modern programming language. Functional is considered a safer coding method, and lends itself to parallelism as well. A typical function in function programming style takes an input and returns an output. Input can be a single item or an array. Output can be either as well. This enables cascading […]

Read more "Feeling In-Place with Functional"

Functional programming has been around since the late 1950’s, based on lambda calculus concepts dating back 100 years. It has been embraced by just about every modern language, because of guarantees it offers. Immutability is one property of functional programming, where functions never change a variable, but instead return a new one. When an function […]

Read more "Computer Architecture is Non-Functional"

What Is It? Computing constantly provides space-time trade-offs. To make an algorithm faster, more space can be used. Or, if space is at a premium, then a slower and more space efficient algorithm can be used. This kind of a trade-off occurs in every aspect of computing, such as software development and chip design. In […]

Read more "To In-Place or To Not-In-Place"