[SPARK-4480] Avoid many small spills in external data structures (1.1)

This is the branch-1.1 version of #3353. This requires a separate PR because the code in master has been refactored a little to eliminate duplicate code. I have tested this on a standalone cluster. The goal is to merge this into 1.1.1.

Author: Andrew Or <andrew@databricks.com>

Closes #3354 from andrewor14/avoid-small-spills-1.1 and squashes the following commits:

f2e552c [Andrew Or] Fix tests
7012595 [Andrew Or] Avoid many small spills
Update CHANGES.txt for 1.1.1-rc2
[maven-release-plugin] prepare release v1.1.1-rc2
[maven-release-plugin] prepare for next development iteration