The maximum and minimum selector SELRAM and its application for developing fast sorting machines

The construction of a fast maximum or minimum selecting device called SELRAM is presented. Its basic component is the MAX device, an iterative circuit whose component is a parallel bit selector (PBS). There are two types of MAX device: TMAX, which is iterated in time and uses one PBS, and SMAX, which is iterated in space and uses m PBSs. If TMAX is a component of SELRAM, then m clock periods are required for selecting a maximum, and if SMAX is a component, only one clock period of O(mn) time is needed. Another component of SELRAM is the SFO (selecting the first one) block, which can be performed in many ways, giving different propagation delays and requiring different numbers of internal connections. The construction of SELRAM makes it possible to sort a given file of records in O( mn) time, and the constant for this estimation depends on the amount of hardware used but is generally very low. VLSI technology is very convenient for manufacturing SELRAM chips