Mesh Computer Algorithms for Computational Geometry

  • Authors:
  • R. Miller;Q. F. Stout

  • Affiliations:
  • State Univ. of New York, Buffalo;Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor

  • Venue:
  • IEEE Transactions on Computers
  • Year:
  • 1989

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Abstract

Asymptotically optimal parallel algorithms are presented for use on a mesh computer to determine several fundamental geometric properties of figures. For example, given multiple figures represented by the Cartesian coordinates of n or fewer planar vertices, distributed one point per processor on a two-dimensional mesh computer with n simple processing elements, Theta (n/sup 1/2/驴-time algorithms are given for identifying the convex hull and smallest enclosing box of each figure. Given two such figures, a Theta (n/sup 1/2/驴-time algorithm is given to decide if the two figures are linearly separable. Given n or fewer planar points, Theta (n/sup 1/2/驴-time algorithms are given to solve the all-nearest neighbor problems for points and for sets of points. Given n or fewer circles, convex figures, hyperplanes, simple polygons, orthogonal polygons, or iso-oriented rectangles, Theta (n/sup 1/2/驴-time algorithms are given to solve a variety of area and intersection problems. Since any serial computer has worst-case time of Omega (n) when processing n points, these algorithms show that the mesh computer provides significantly better solutions to these problems.