sorting and threading data sets

Description:

You will create processes, run processes in parallel, and pass information between processes. The data to be processed are “tuples” which are numbers and associated text strings, that is lines of CSV separated values, we wish to sort these.

1. Get the data set on Canvas

1a. Sort the data, that is each “record” (line, tuple) in ascending order by numeric value

2. Either: sort the data by hand (not a good idea), or write a two loop (bubble or insertion) sort program to sort the data.

(Do not use a “better” (faster) sorting method, the purpose is to use a “slow” sort method, but if you really want to, use much, much bigger data.)

3. “Instrument” your program (time it). Do not include time to load data or output results.

4. Create a program that will, in turn, run multiple processes “concurrently”

(at the same time, employing all of your CPUs and CPU Cores, using “fork( )” and “exec( )” (there are several variants of exec (execl, execv, etc.)

Please do not use “threads” (yet).

5. Do the sort, again, in parallel for 2 concurrent processes, then 4, and finally 10 processes.

6. Instrument those sorts (like above).

7. How will you pass data (parts of the array) to each process (IPC)? (Files, pipes, shared memory, message queues?)

8. You may (not required) to use a menu to select number of processes, size of data, et