Hilbert curve indexing

tags: Coding

Hilbert curves can be used for an interesting trick involving 2D arrays indexing. Because of the way the Hilbert curve traverses the 2D space, indexing a 2D array this way can be a more cache-friendly solution when frequently accessing neighbors of an array element.

Figure 1: Hilbert curve with different number of iterations

C implementation from Wikipedia to convert (x,y) coordinates to linear ones and vice versa:

//convert (x,y) to d
int xy2d (int n, int x, int y) {
    int rx, ry, s, d=0;
    for (s=n/2; s>0; s/=2) {
        rx = (x & s) > 0;
        ry = (y & s) > 0;
        d += s * s * ((3 * rx) ^ ry);
        rot(n, &x, &y, rx, ry);
    }
    return d;
}

//convert d to (x,y)
void d2xy(int n, int d, int *x, int *y) {
    int rx, ry, s, t=d;
    *x = *y = 0;
    for (s=1; s<n; s*=2) {
        rx = 1 & (t/2);
        ry = 1 & (t ^ rx);
        rot(s, x, y, rx, ry);
        *x += s * rx;
        *y += s * ry;
        t /= 4;
    }
}

//rotate/flip a quadrant appropriately
void rot(int n, int *x, int *y, int rx, int ry) {
    if (ry == 0) {
        if (rx == 1) {
            *x = n-1 - *x;
            *y = n-1 - *y;
        }

        //Swap x and y
        int t  = *x;
        *x = *y;
        *y = t;
    }
}

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