Distributed-memory Parallel Algorithms for Matching and Coloring

Abstract

Graph matching and coloring constitute two fundamental classes of combinatorial problems having numerous established as well as emerging applications in computational science and engineering, high-performance computing, and informatics. We provide a snapshot of an on-going work on the design and implementation of new highly-scalable distributed-memory parallel algorithms for two prototypical problems from these classes, edge-weighted matching and distance-1 vertex coloring. Graph algorithms in general have low concurrency and poor data locality, making it challenging to achieve scalability on massively parallel machines. We overcome this challenge by employing a variety of techniques, including approximation, speculation and iteration, optimized communication, and randomization, in concert. We present preliminary results on weak and strong scalability studies conducted on an IBM Blue Gene/P machine employing up to tens of thousands of processors. The results show that the algorithms hold strong potential for computing at petascale.