Before revision:  We present for the first time a generalization of the persistence algorithm based on a generalized matrix reduction technique that runs in O(n^{2\omega  }) time  where \omega<2.
After revision:  We present for the first time a generalization of the persistence algorithm based on a generalized matrix reduction technique that runs in O(n^{2\omega }) time for d=2 and in O(n^{d(2\omega +1) where \omega<2.