The Complexity of Parallel Multisearch on Coarse-Grained Machines

Abstract.

Given m ordered segments that form a partition of some universe (e.g., a two-dimensional strip), the multisearch problem consists of determining, for a set of n query points in the universe, the segments they belong to. We present the first nontrivial parallel deterministic scheme for performing multisearch on a distributed-memory machine when m=ω(n) . The scheme is designed on the BSP* model of parallel computation, a variant of Valiant's BSP which rewards blockwise communication, and relies on a suitable redundant representation of the segments. The time needed to answer the queries is analyzed as a function of the redundancy and of the BSP* parameters. We show that optimal performance can be obtained using logarithmic redundancy. We also prove a lower bound on the communication requirements of any deterministic multisearch scheme realized on a distributed-memory machine. The lower bound exhibits a tradeoff between the redundancy used to represent the segments and the performance of the scheme.