An efficient parallel strategy for high-cost prefix operation

Abstract

The prefix computation strategy is a fundamental technique used to solve many problems in computer science such as sorting, clustering, and computer vision. A large number of parallel algorithms have been introduced that are based on a variety of high-performance systems. However, these algorithms do not consider the cost of the prefix computation operation. In this paper, we design a novel strategy for prefix computation to reduce the running time for high-cost operations such as multiplication. The proposed algorithm is based on (1) reducing the size of the partition and (2) keeping a fixed-size partition during all the steps of the computation. Experiments on a multicore system for different array sizes and number sizes demonstrate that the proposed parallel algorithm reduces the running time of the best-known optimal parallel algorithm in the average range of 62.7–79.6%. Moreover, the proposed algorithm has high speedup and is more scalable than those in previous works.