Randomized Priority Queues for Fast Parallel Access

We present simple randomized algorithms for parallel priority queues on distributed memory machines. Inserting O(n) elements or deleting the O(n) out ofmsmallest elements usingnprocessors requires O(T_coll+ log(m/n)) amortized time with high probability whereT_collbounds the time for performing prefix sums and randomized routing. The memory requirement is bounded by (m/n)(1 +o(1)) + O(logn) whp. These bounds are an improvement over the best previously known algorithms for many interconnection networks and even matches the speed of the best known PRAM algorithms. Generalizations for accessing thek⪢nsmallest elements are even more efficient. A portable implementation using MPI demonstrates that our approach is already useful for medium scale parallelism. Two parallel selection algorithms for randomly placed data are a spin-off. One runs in time O(T_coll) with high probability, beating a lower bound for the worst case. The other requires only a single reduction operation.