ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 28 -- United States Patent no. 12,450,029, issued on Oct. 21.
"Top down merge sort method and apparatus" was invented by Robert Bernard Kent (Albuquerque, N.M.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method and apparatus for merging and sorting a plurality of lists. The method can be implemented in, and the apparatus can comprise, hardware and all phase sorting operations are preferably performed in parallel. Thus, a multistage sorting process can be implemented with 1 or more 2-sorters operating in parallel in each stage. This enables two or more lists to be sorted and merged very quickly. The input lists are preferably setup in an input array before the merge sorting operatio...