Optimizing Graph Algorithms for Improved Cache Performance

• Authors: Joon-Sang Park;Michael Penner;Viktor K. Prasanna
• Venue: IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems
• Year: 2004

In this paper, we develop algorithmic optimizations to improve the cache performance of four fundamental graph algorithms. We present a cache-oblivious implementation of the Floyd-Warshall Algorithm for the fundamental graph problem of all-pairs shortest paths by relaxing some dependencies in the iterative version. We show that this implementation achieves the lower bound on processor-memory traffic of \Omega (N^3/\sqrt{C}), where N and C are the problem size and cache size, respectively. Experimental results show that this cache-oblivious implementation shows more than six times the improvement in real execution time over that of the iterative implementation with the usual row major data layout, on three state-of-the-art architectures. Second, we address Dijkstra's algorithm for the single-source shortest paths problem and Prim's algorithm for minimum spanning tree problem. For these algorithms, we demonstrate up to two times the improvement in real execution time by using a simple cache-friendly graph representation, namely adjacency arrays. Finally, we address the matching algorithm for bipartite graphs. We show performance improvements of two to three times in real execution time by using the technique of making the algorithm initially work on subproblems to generate a suboptimal solution and, then, solving the whole problem using the suboptimal solution as a starting point. Experimental results are shown for the Pentium III, UltraSPARC III, Alpha 21264, and MIPS R12000 machines.