15. The method of claim 14 , said maintaining the sorted list comprises: (a) incrementing a first frequency of a first symbol associated with a token of the stream received from the first hardware engine; and (b) repeatedly swapping locations of the first symbol and a second symbol just above the first symbol in the sorted list while the first frequency is greater than a second frequency of the second symbol.
15. The method of claim 14 , said maintaining the sorted list comprises: (a) incrementing a first frequency of a first symbol associated with a token of the stream received from the first hardware engine; and (b) repeatedly swapping locations of the first symbol and a second symbol just above the first symbol in the sorted list while the first frequency is greater than a second frequency of the second symbol. 16. The method of claim 15 , further comprising: the second hardware engine performs said (a) and (b) while the first hardware engine scans the input block of characters to produce a next token in the stream.