The Parallel Evaluation of General Arithmetic Expressions

  • Authors:
  • Richard P. Brent

  • Affiliations:
  • Computer Centre, Australian Nalional University, P.O. Box 4, Canberra, A.C.T. 2600, Australia

  • Venue:
  • Journal of the ACM (JACM)
  • Year:
  • 1974

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Abstract

It is shown that arithmetic expressions with n ≥ 1 variables and constants; operations of addition, multiplication, and division; and any depth of parenthesis nesting can be evaluated in time 4 log2n + 10(n - 1)/p using p ≥ 1 processors which can independently perform arithmetic operations in unit time. This bound is within a constant factor of the best possible. A sharper result is given for expressions without the division operation, and the question of numerical stability is discussed.