Sorting on a Cell Broadband Engine SPU

We adapt merge sort for a single SPU of the cell broadband engine. This adaptation takes advantage of the vector instructions supported by the SPU. Experimental results indicate that our merge sort adaptation is faster than other sort algorithms (e.g., AA sort, Cell sort, quick sort) proposed for the SPU as well as faster than our SPU adaptations of shaker sort and brick sort. An added advantage is that our merge sort adaptation is a stable sort whereas none of the other sort adaptations is stable.