Investigation of sorting algorithms on a variety of computers

Four sorting algorithms—bubble, insertion, heap, and quick—are studied on an IBM 3090/600, a VAX 11/780, and the NYU Ultracomputer. It is verified that for N items the bubble and insertion sorts are of order N² whereas the heap and quick sorts are of order N ln N. It is shown that the choice of algorithm is more important than the choice of machine. Moreover, the influence of paging on algorithm performance is examined.