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Free keywords:
Computer Science, Data Structures and Algorithms, cs.DS,Computer Science, Computational Complexity, cs.CC,Computer Science, Performance, cs.PF,
Abstract:
Modern computers are not random access machines (RAMs). They have a memory
hierarchy, multiple cores, and virtual memory. In this paper, we address the
computational cost of address translation in virtual memory. Starting point for
our work is the observation that the analysis of some simple algorithms (random
scan of an array, binary search, heapsort) in either the RAM model or the EM
model (external memory model) does not correctly predict growth rates of actual
running times. We propose the VAT model (virtual address translation) to
account for the cost of address translations and analyze the algorithms
mentioned above and others in the model. The predictions agree with the
measurements. We also analyze the VAT-cost of cache-oblivious algorithms.
