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AlphaSort: A Cache-Sensitive Parallel
External Sort
January 1, 1995
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Authors

Tom Barclay

Jim Gray

Chris Nyberg

David Lomet

Zarka Cvetanovic
Publication Type
Inproceedings
Publisher
Springer-Verlag
All copyrights reserved by Springer 1995.

Abstract

Related Info
Abstract
A new sort algorithm, called AlphaSort, demonstrates that commodity processors and disks can
handle commercial batch workloads. Using commodity processors, memory, and arrays of SCSI
disks, AlphaSort runs the industry-standard sort benchmark in seven seconds. This beats the best
published record on a 32-CPU 32-disk Hypercube by 8:1. On another benchmark, AlphaSort
sorted more than a gigabyte in a minute. AlphaSort is a cache-sensitive memory-intensive sort
algorithm. We argue that modern architectures require algorithm designers to re-examine their
use of the memory hierarchy. AlphaSort uses clustered data structures to get good cache locality.
It uses file striping to get high disk bandwidth. It uses QuickSort to generate runs and uses
replacement-selection to merge the runs. It uses shared memory multiprocessors to break the sort
into subsort chores. Because startup times are becoming a significant part of the total time, we
propose two new benchmarks: (1) MinuteSort: how much can you sort in a minute, and (2)
PennySort: how much can you sort for a penny.
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