SquareSort: a cache-oblivious sorting algorithm

TL;DR

This paper introduces SquareSort, a simple cache-oblivious sorting algorithm that achieves asymptotically optimal IO complexity, matching the best known algorithms like FunnelSort, in the cache-oblivious model.

Contribution

SquareSort is a new, simple cache-oblivious sorting algorithm with optimal IO complexity, providing an alternative to existing algorithms like FunnelSort.

Findings

Achieves optimal IO complexity of O(n/B log_{M/B} n)

Simpler than existing cache-oblivious sorting algorithms

Matches the asymptotic performance of FunnelSort

Abstract

In this paper we consider sorting in the cache-oblivious model of Frigo, Leiserson, Prokop, and Ramachandran (1999). We introduce a new simple sorting algorithm in that model which has asymptotically optimal IO complexity $O(\frac{n}{B} \log_{M/B} n)$, where $n$ is the instance size, $M$ size of the cache and $B$ size of a memory block. This is the same as the complexity of the best known cache-oblivious sorting algorithm FunnelSort.