Scaling Betweenness Centrality using Communication-Efficient Sparse Matrix Multiplication

Betweenness centrality (BC) is a crucial graph problem that measures the significance of a vertex by the number of shortest paths leading through it. We propose Maximal Frontier Betweenness Centrality (MFBC): a succinct BC algorithm based on novel sparse matrix multiplication routines that performs a factor of $p^{1/3}$ less communication on p processors than the best known alternatives, for graphs with n vertices and average degree $k=n/p^{2/3}$. We formulate, implement, and prove the correctness of MFBC for weighted graphs by leveraging monoids instead of semirings, which enables a surprisingly succinct formulation. MFBC scales well for both extremely sparse and relatively dense graphs. It automatically searches a space of distributed data decompositions and sparse matrix multiplication algorithms for the most advantageous configuration. The MFBC implementation outperforms the well-known CombBLAS library by up to 8x and shows more robust performance. Our design methodology is readily extensible to other graph problems. CCS CONCEPTS • Theory of computation → Massively parallel algorithms; • Mathematics of computing → Mathematical software performance; • Computing methodologies → Algebraic algorithms; Massively parallel algorithms;