US 6,274,836 B1Granted

Method and system for multi-stream object sorting

AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation

InventorEugene Walach

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Abstract

A sorting machine has multiple input bins which are used for all passes of sorting. At each sorting pass, each output bin is associated with and receives input from exactly one input bin. A multi-bin sorter has p input bins and n output bins, n being greater or equal to p. A first sort is performed on the basis of at least part of the sorting key which is associated to each article, providing n output groups of articles corresponding to the n output bins. The sorted articles in n output bins are then grouped in p input bins and resorted by the multi-bin sorter providing n new output groups of articles, each output group being associated with and fed by exactly one of the input bins. The first sorting could be based on a first portion of the sorting key, and the second sorting could be based on a second portion of the sorting key, the first and second portions being non-disjoint.

Claims22

Dependent claims

A method for sorting articles, the method comprising the steps of:

providing a multiplicity of articles to be sorted, each one of said multiplicity of articles having an associated sorting key;
providing a multi-bin article sorter having a first plurality p of input bins and a second plurality n of output bins, n being greater than or equal to p;
using the multi-bin article sorter to sort the multiplicity of articles based, at least in part, on at least part of the sorting key associated with each one of said multiplicity of articles, to produce n output groups of articles corresponding respectively to the second plurality n of output bins;
and
performing a further sort comprising:
grouping the n output groups of articles into p input groups;
and
resorting the p input groups using the multi-bin article sorter, each of the p input groups being placed in one of the first plurality p of input bins, to produce n new output groups of articles corresponding respectively to the second plurality n of output bins, wherein each of the n new output groups is associated with and fed by exactly one of the p input bins.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.