Samplesort

Samplesort is a sorting algorithm that is a divide and conquer algorithm often used in parallel processing systems. Conventional divide and conquer sorting algorithms partitions the array into sub-intervals or buckets. The buckets are then sorted individually and then concatenated together. However, if the array is non-uniformly distributed, the performance of these sorting algorithms can be significantly throttled. Samplesort addresses this issue by selecting a sample of size s from the n-element sequence, and determining the range of the buckets by sorting the sample and choosing m -1 elements from the result. These elements (called splitters) then divide the sample into m equal-sized buckets. Samplesort is described in the 1970 paper, 'Samplesort: A Sampling Approach to Minimal Storage Tree Sorting', by W. D. Frazer and A. C. McKellar. Samplesort is a sorting algorithm that is a divide and conquer algorithm often used in parallel processing systems. Conventional divide and conquer sorting algorithms partitions the array into sub-intervals or buckets. The buckets are then sorted individually and then concatenated together. However, if the array is non-uniformly distributed, the performance of these sorting algorithms can be significantly throttled. Samplesort addresses this issue by selecting a sample of size s from the n-element sequence, and determining the range of the buckets by sorting the sample and choosing m -1 elements from the result. These elements (called splitters) then divide the sample into m equal-sized buckets. Samplesort is described in the 1970 paper, 'Samplesort: A Sampling Approach to Minimal Storage Tree Sorting', by W. D. Frazer and A. C. McKellar. Samplesort is a generalization of quicksort. Where quicksort partitions its input into two parts at each step, based on a single value called the pivot, samplesort instead takes a larger sample from its input and divides its data into buckets accordingly. Like quicksort, it then recursively sorts the buckets. To devise a samplesort implementation, one needs to decide on the number of buckets p. When this is done, the actual algorithm operates in three phases: