A comparison-free sorting algorithm
Saleh Abdel-Hafeez, Ann Gordon-Ross · 2014
We propose a novel sorting algorithm that sorts data elements without data comparison operations - a comparison-free sort. Our hardware-based sorting algorithm leverages Hamming memory, which is an SRAM-based memory structure that stores the data elements based on the elements' Hamming maximum order representations. The data elements are also stored in a serial shift buffer in binary representation, and a simple matrix multiplication between this buffer and the Hamming memory produces the outputted sorted elements in 2N clock cycles for N data elements.