An apparatus is described having a functional unit of an instruction execution pipeline. The functional unit has a plurality of compare-and-exchange circuits coupled to network circuitry to implement a vector sorting tree for a vector sorting instruction. Each of the compare-and-exchange circuits has a respective comparison circuit that compares a pair of inputs. Each of the compare-and-exchange circuits have a same sided first output for presenting a higher of the two inputs and a same sided second output for presenting a lower of the two inputs, said comparison circuit to also support said functional unit's execution of a prefix min and/or prefix add instruction.