Parallel Priority Queue and List Contraction: The BSP Approach

Abstract

In this work we present efficient and practical randomized data structures on the Bulk-Synchronous Parallel (BSP) model of computation along with an experimental study of their performance. In particular, we study data structures for the realization of Parallel Priority Queues (PPQs). We show that our algorithms are communication efficient and achieve optimality to within small multiplicative constant factors for a wide range of parallel machines. We also present an experimental study of our PPQ algorithms on a Cray T3D\@. Finally, we present new randomized and deterministic BSP algorithms for list and tree contraction.