Abstract: Operating at real-time data rates, the disclosed hardware apparatus determine which one of a set of R input data signals is the Mth-largest. Mutual comparisons between the data values themselves provides the basis for the mechanized determination schemes.After every data signal is pair-wise compared (112-167) with every other data signal, each subset of results (C12-C17, C12-C27, C13-C37, C14-C47, C15-C57, C16-C67), consistng of the outcome of the comparisons between a given data signal and all other data signals, is tested (210-260) to determine whether the results indicate that (M-1) of the other data signals are greater than the given signal. That data signal whose result set satisfies this (M-1) condition is the Mth-largest and is used (270, 280) as the network output (285).For data that is serially-presented (490,400) a network simplification makes set-testing possible after only one data value, that most-recently-presented, is compared (412-417) to all other (R-1) signals of the set.

Abstract: Operating at real-time data rates, hardware logic networks (FIGS. 3-6) receive onto a data-channel array (390 in FIG. 3) a set of unordered input data values and iteratively pair-wise transpose the set members until their positional order on the array coincides with the order the members would assume if their magnitudes were arranged according to sequential ordinal rank. Pair-wise comparisons between the data values themselves provide the basis for the mechanized pair-wise transposition schemes.Within each network, a key building block for performing both the pair comparisons and member transpositions is a Number Pair Orderer (NPO) (FIG. 2). Each NPO compares (210) two data elements and passes the smaller to one of its outputs (240), while passing the larger to the other of its outputs (260). Individual NPO's are arranged into two groups (311-315 and 321-325), each of which operates iteratively upon pairs of substantially all of the data values.