The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Aug. 08, 1995
Filed:
Sep. 14, 1993
Bruce A Wagar, San Jose, CA (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A system and process for enhancing internal radix sorting bin storage efficiency by using linked blocks of contiguous storage space while controlling the number of partially-filled blocks required. The improved internal radix sorting procedure makes it possible to sort large computer files very efficiently without the risk of overflowing allocated storage space. A Most Significant Byte (MSD) radix sorting procedure avoids the collection step required in the LSD radix sorting procedure. The distribution pass is halted whenever a bin is found to contain less than a predetermined threshold number of records and the bin is then sorted immediately using a simple comparison-based sort. At each distribution rank, the system selects and sorts the smallest bins first, thereby quickly releasing storage blocks that may be required during the distribution sort passes for the larger bins. In this radix sorting procedure, the total number of linked storage blocks of size B can never exceed (R/B)+(1-1/B)A, where R is the total number of records to be sorted and A=(M-1) log.sub.M (R/T)+min (T,M)+1, where M=key field digit radix and T=bin size threshold for switching to comparison-based sort completion.