@TechReport{chaudhry:relaxing, author = {Geeta Chaudhry and Thomas H. Cormen}, title = {Relaxing the Problem-Size Bound for Out-of-Core Columnsort}, year = {2003}, month = {April}, number = {TR2003-445}, institution = {Dept. of Computer Science, Dartmouth College}, address = {Hanover, NH}, URL = {ftp://ftp.cs.dartmouth.edu/TR/TR2003-445.ps.Z}, keywords = {parallel I/O, sorting, out-of-core applications, pario-bib}, abstract = {Previous implementations of out-of-core columnsort limit the problem size to $N \leq \sqrt{(M/P)^3 / 2}$, where $N$ is the number of records to sort, $P$ is the number of processors, and $M$ is the total number of records that the entire system can hold in its memory (so that $M/P$ is the number of records that a single processor can hold in its memory). We implemented two variations to out-of-core columnsort that relax this restriction. Subblock columnsort is based on an algorithmic modification of the underlying columnsort algorithm, and it improves the problem-size bound to $N \leq (M/P)^{5/3} / 4^{2/3}$ but at the cost of additional disk I/O\. $M$-columnsort changes the notion of the column size in columnsort.} }