AN OPTIMAL PARALLEL ALGORITHM FOR GENERATING PERMUTATIONS IN MINIMAL CHANGE ORDER

Abstract

Permutation generation is an important problem in combinatorial computing. In this paper we present an optimal parallel algorithm to generate all N! permutations of N objects. The algorithm is designed to be executed on a very simple computation model that is a linear array with N identical processors. Because of the simplicity and regularity of the processors, the model is very suitable for VLSI implementation. Another advantageous characteristic of this design is that it can generate all the permutations in minimal change order.