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From: rbl@nitrex.UUCP ( Dr. Robin Lake )
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Sort Co-Processors
Message-ID: <556@nitrex.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 14-Oct-87 14:34:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: nitrex.556
Posted: Wed Oct 14 14:34:05 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 17-Oct-87 05:38:10 EDT
References: <112@sdeggo.UUCP> <7473@ism780c.UUCP> <379@srs.UUCP>
Reply-To: rbl@nitrex.UUCP ( Dr. Robin Lake )
Organization: The Standard Oil Co., Cleveland
Lines: 20

In article <379@srs.UUCP> dan@srs.UUCP (Dan Kegel) writes:
>In article <112@sdeggo.UUCP> dave@sdeggo.UUCP (David L. Smith) writes:
>> Has anyone out there ever run across a sorting co-processor?  
>> Is there any research being done in this, or does it sound like a useless
>> idea?
>
>I heard somewhere that, using log N simple sort processors arranged cleverly,
>one could perform a sort in N-time.  Has this ever been tried in hardware?
>- Dan Kegel   rochester!srs!dan


Raymond J. Nelson (author of the Automata Theory book and Prof. Emeritus
at CWRU) has a patent on sort hardware that sorts in one bit-time.  Basically
a set of incoming 0/1 bit streams on N input lines are "steered" to N output
lines as they pass thru the device.  Mail to me regarding this will be passed
to Dr. Nelson.

-- 
Rob Lake
{decvax,ihnp4!cbosgd}!mandrill!nitrex!rbl