The projector algorithm: a simple parallel algorithm for computing Voronoi diagrams and Delaunay graphs

The Voronoi diagram is a certain geometric data structure which has numerous applications in various scientific and technological fields. The theory of algorithms for computing 2D Euclidean Voronoi diagrams of point sites is rich and useful, with several different and important algorithms. However, this theory has been quite steady during the last few decades in the sense that no essentially new algorithms have entered the game. In addition, most of the known algorithms are serial in nature and hence cast inherent difficulties on the possibility to compute the diagram in parallel. In this paper we present the projector algorithm: a new and simple algorithm which enables the (combinatorial) computation of 2D Voronoi diagrams. The algorithm is significantly different from previous ones and some of the involved concepts in it are in the spirit of linear programming and optics. Parallel implementation is naturally supported since each Voronoi cell can be computed independently of the other cells. A new combinatorial structure for representing the cells (and any convex polytope) is described along the way and the computation of the induced Delaunay graph is obtained almost automatically.Comment: This is a major revision; re-organization and better presentation of some parts; correction of several inaccuracies; improvement of some proofs and figures; added references; modification of the title; the paper is long but more than half of it is composed of proofs and references: it is sufficient to look at pages 5, 7--11 in order to understand the algorith

Efficient Algorithms for a Mesh-Connected Computer with Additional Global Bandwidth

This thesis shows that adding additional global bandwidths to a mesh-connected computer can greatly improve the performance. The goal of this project is to design algorithms for mesh-connected computers augmented with limited global bandwidth, so that we can further enhance our understanding of the parallel/serial nature of the problems on evolving parallel architectures. We do this by first solving several problems associated with fundamental data movement, then summarize ways to resolve different situations one may observe in data movement in parallel computing. This can help us to understand whether the problem is easily parallelizable on different parallel models. We give efficient algorithms to solve several fundamental problems, which include sorting, counting, fast Fourier transform, finding a minimum spanning tree, finding a convex hull, etc. We show that adding a small amount of global bandwidth makes a practical design that combines aspects of mesh and fully connected models to achieve the benefits of each. Most of the algorithms are optimal. For future work, we believe that algorithms with peak-power constrains can make our model well adapted to the recent architectures in high performance computing.PHDComputer Science & EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/150001/1/anyujie_1.pd

PARALLEL ALGORITHMS IN GEOMETRY

The goal of parallel algorithm design is to develop parallel computational methods that run very fast with as few processors as possible, and there is an extensive literature of such algorithms for computational geometry problems. There are several different parallel computing models, and in order to maintain a focus in thi