MPI-I-95-1-010

This paper is concerned with the average running time of Batcher's odd-even merge sort when implemented on a collection of processors. We consider the case where $n$, the size of the input, is an arbitrary multiple of the number $p$ of processors used. We show that Batcher's odd-even merge (for two sorted lists of length $n$ each) can be implemented to run in time $O((n/p)(\log (2+p^2/n)))$ on the average, and that odd-even merge sort can be implemented to run in time $O((n/p)(\log n+\log p\log (2+p^2/n)))$ on the average. In the case of merging (sorting), the average is taken over all possible outcomes of the merging (all possible permutations of $n$ elements). That means that odd-even merge and odd-even merge sort have an optimal average running time if $n\geq p^2$. The constants involved are also quite small.