Cache oblivious distribution sweeping

Abstract We adapt the distribution sweeping method to the cache oblivious model. Distribution sweeping is the name used for a general approach for divide-and-conquer algorithms where the combination of solved subproblems can be viewed as a merging process of streams. We demonstrate by a series of algorithms for specific problems the feasibility of the method in a cache oblivious setting. The problems all come from computational geometry, and are: orthogonal line segment intersection reporting, the all nearest neighbors problem, the 3D maxima problem, computing the measure of a set of axis-parallel rectangles, computing the visibility of a set of line segments from a point, batched orthogonal range queries, and reporting pairwise intersections of axis-parallel rectangles. Our basic building block is a simplified version of the cache oblivious sorting algorithm Funnelsort of Frigo et al., which is of independent in-terest.