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:
Oct. 23, 2012
Filed:
Nov. 28, 2011
Kyu-young Whang, Daejeon, KR;
Min Soo Kim, Daejeon, KR;
Jeong-hoon Lee, Daegu, KR;
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, KR;
Abstract
The present invention relates to an algorithm that retrieves only k data elements having the largest (or smallest) key values from a dataset (i.e., top-k results) in a time linearly proportional to the size of the dataset. The proposed method using the algorithm finds the top-k results using a k-sized min (or max) heap structure that maintains candidate elements of the top-k results by scanning all data elements in the dataset only once. In other words, the present invention provides a linear-time top-k sort method that finds top-k results in a time linearly proportional to the size of the dataset (i.e., O(n) time complexity), while conventional sort algorithms for finding top-k results cannot find the top-k results in a time linearly proportional to the size of the dataset (i.e., at least O(n log n) time complexity).