Tag Archives: locality

Accelerating Graph Analytics by Utilising the Memory Locality of Graph Partitioning

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https://doi.org/10.1109/ICPP.2017.27

This paper investigates how to improve the memory locality of graph-structured analytics on large-scale shared memory systems. We demonstrate that a graph partitioning where all in-edges for a vertex are placed in the same partition improves memory locality. However, realising performance improvement through such graph partitioning poses several challenges and requires rethinking the classification of graph algorithms and preferred data structures. We introduce the notion of medium dense frontiers, a type of frontier that is sufficiently dense for a bitmap representation, yet benefits from an indexed graph layout. Using three types of frontiers, and three graph layout schemes optimized to each frontier type, we design an edge traversal algorithm that autonomously decides which type to use. The distinction of forward vs. backward graph traversal folds into this decision and need no longer be specified by the programmer.We have implemented our techniques in a NUMA-aware graph analytics framework derived from Ligra and demonstrate a speedup of up to 4.34× over Ligra and up to 2.93× over Polymer.

GraphGrind: Addressing Load Imbalance of Graph Partitioning

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https://doi.org/10.1145/3079079.3079097

We investigate how graph partitioning adversely affects the performance of graph analytics. We demonstrate that graph partitioning induces extra work during graph traversal and that graph partitions have markedly different connectivity than the original graph. By consequence, increasing the number of partitions reaches a tipping point after which overheads quickly dominate performance gains. Moreover, we show that the heuristic to balance CPU load between graph partitions by balancing the number of edges is inappropriate for a range of graph analyses. However, even when it is appropriate, it is sub-optimal due to the skewed degree distribution of social networks. Based on these observations, we propose GraphGrind, a new graph analytics system that addresses the limitations incurred by graph partitioning. We moreover propose a NUMA-aware extension to the Cilk programming language and obtain a scale-free yet NUMA-aware parallel programming environment which underpins NUMA-aware scheduling in GraphGrind. We demonstrate that Graph-Grind outperforms state-of-the-art graph analytics systems for shared memory including Ligra, Polymer and Galois.