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Christian Schulz

Publications and source records attributed to Christian Schulz.

At least 109 records · Page 6Linked to original sources
arXiv2017

Graph Partitioning with Acyclicity Constraints

Graphs are widely used to model execution dependencies in applications. In particular, the NP-complete problem of partitioning a graph under constraints receives enormous attention by researchers because of its applicability in multiprocessor scheduling. We identified the additional constraint of acyclic dependencies between blocks when mapping computer vision and imaging applications to a heterogeneous embedded multiprocessor. Existing algorithms and heuristics do not address this requirement and deliver results that are not applicable for our use-case. In this work, we show that this more constrained version of the graph partitioning problem is NP-complete and present heuristics that achieve a close approximation of the optimal solution found by an exhaustive search for small problem instances and much better scalability for larger instances. In addition, we can show a positive impact on the schedule of a real imaging application that improves communication volume and execution time.

cs.DS↗
arXiv2017

Optimal Longest Paths by Dynamic Programming

We propose an optimal algorithm for solving the longest path problem in undirected weighted graphs. By using graph partitioning and dynamic programming, we obtain an algorithm that is significantly faster than other state-of-the-art methods. This enables us to solve instances that have previously been unsolved.

cs.DS↗
arXiv2017

Distributed Evolutionary k-way Node Separators

Computing high quality node separators in large graphs is necessary for a variety of applications, ranging from divide-and-conquer algorithms to VLSI design. In this work, we present a novel distributed evolutionary algorithm tackling the k-way node separator problem. A key component of our contribution includes new k-way local search algorithms based on maximum flows. We combine our local search with a multilevel approach to compute an initial population for our evolutionary algorithm, and further show how to modify the coarsening stage of our multilevel algorithm to create effective combine and mutation operations. Lastly, we combine these techniques with a scalable communication protocol, producing a system that is able to compute high quality solutions in a short amount of time. Our experiments against competing algorithms show that our advanced evolutionary algorithm computes the best result on 94% of the chosen benchmark instances.

cs.NE↗
arXiv2017

Existence of Some Signed Magic Arrays

We consider the notion of a signed magic array, which is an $m \times n$ rectangular array with the same number of filled cells $s$ in each row and the same number of filled cells $t$ in each column, filled with a certain set of numbers that is symmetric about the number zero, such that every row and column has a zero sum. We attempt to make progress toward a characterization of for which $(m, n, s, t)$ there exists such an array. This characterization is complete in the case where $n = s$ and in the case where $n = m$; we also characterize three-fourths of the cases where $n = 2m$.

math.CO↗
arXiv2016

Scalable Generation of Scale-free Graphs

We explain how massive instances of scale-free graphs following the Barabasi-Albert model can be generated very quickly in an embarrassingly parallel way. This makes this popular model available for studying big data graph problems. As a demonstration, we generated a Petaedge graph in less than an hour.

cs.DS↗
arXiv2016

Accelerating Local Search for the Maximum Independent Set Problem

Computing high-quality independent sets quickly is an important problem in combinatorial optimization. Several recent algorithms have shown that kernelization techniques can be used to find exact maximum independent sets in medium-sized sparse graphs, as well as high-quality independent sets in huge sparse graphs that are intractable for exact (exponential-time) algorithms. However, a major drawback of these algorithms is that they require significant preprocessing overhead, and therefore cannot be used to find a high-quality independent set quickly. In this paper, we show that performing simple kernelization techniques in an online fashion significantly boosts the performance of local search, and is much faster than pre-computing a kernel using advanced techniques. In addition, we show that cutting high-degree vertices can boost local search performance even further, especially on huge (sparse) complex networks. Our experiments show that we can drastically speed up the computation of large independent sets compared to other state-of-the-art algorithms, while also producing results that are very close to the best known solutions.

cs.DS↗
arXiv2015

k-way Hypergraph Partitioning via n-Level Recursive Bisection

We develop a multilevel algorithm for hypergraph partitioning that contracts the vertices one at a time. Using several caching and lazy-evaluation techniques during coarsening and refinement, we reduce the running time by up to two-orders of magnitude compared to a naive $n$-level algorithm that would be adequate for ordinary graph partitioning. The overall performance is even better than the widely used hMetis hypergraph partitioner that uses a classical multilevel algorithm with few levels. Aided by a portfolio-based approach to initial partitioning and adaptive budgeting of imbalance within recursive bipartitioning, we achieve very high quality. We assembled a large benchmark set with 310 hypergraphs stemming from application areas such VLSI, SAT solving, social networks, and scientific computing. We achieve significantly smaller cuts than hMetis and PaToH, while being faster than hMetis. Considerably larger improvements are observed for some instance classes like social networks, for bipartitioning, and for partitions with an allowed imbalance of 10%. The algorithm presented in this work forms the basis of our hypergraph partitioning framework KaHyPar (Karlsruhe Hypergraph Partitioning).

cs.DS↗
arXiv2015

Advanced Multilevel Node Separator Algorithms

A node separator of a graph is a subset S of the nodes such that removing S and its incident edges divides the graph into two disconnected components of about equal size. In this work, we introduce novel algorithms to find small node separators in large graphs. With focus on solution quality, we introduce novel flow-based local search algorithms which are integrated in a multilevel framework. In addition, we transfer techniques successfully used in the graph partitioning field. This includes the usage of edge ratings tailored to our problem to guide the graph coarsening algorithm as well as highly localized local search and iterated multilevel cycles to improve solution quality even further. Experiments indicate that flow-based local search algorithms on its own in a multilevel framework are already highly competitive in terms of separator quality. Adding additional local search algorithms further improves solution quality. Our strongest configuration almost always outperforms competing systems while on average computing 10% and 62% smaller separators than Metis and Scotch, respectively.

cs.DS↗
arXiv2015

Finding Near-Optimal Independent Sets at Scale

The independent set problem is NP-hard and particularly difficult to solve in large sparse graphs. In this work, we develop an advanced evolutionary algorithm, which incorporates kernelization techniques to compute large independent sets in huge sparse networks. A recent exact algorithm has shown that large networks can be solved exactly by employing a branch-and-reduce technique that recursively kernelizes the graph and performs branching. However, one major drawback of their algorithm is that, for huge graphs, branching still can take exponential time. To avoid this problem, we recursively choose vertices that are likely to be in a large independent set (using an evolutionary approach), then further kernelize the graph. We show that identifying and removing vertices likely to be in large independent sets opens up the reduction space---which not only speeds up the computation of large independent sets drastically, but also enables us to compute high-quality independent sets on much larger instances than previously reported in the literature.

cs.DS↗
arXiv2015

Drawing Large Graphs by Multilevel Maxent-Stress Optimization

Drawing large graphs appropriately is an important step for the visual analysis of data from real-world networks. Here we present a novel multilevel algorithm to compute a graph layout with respect to a recently proposed metric that combines layout stress and entropy. As opposed to previous work, we do not solve the linear systems of the maxent-stress metric with a typical numerical solver. Instead we use a simple local iterative scheme within a multilevel approach. To accelerate local optimization, we approximate long-range forces and use shared-memory parallelism. Our experiments validate the high potential of our approach, which is particularly appealing for dynamic graphs. In comparison to the previously best maxent-stress optimizer, which is sequential, our parallel implementation is on average 30 times faster already for static graphs (and still faster if executed on one thread) while producing a comparable solution quality.

cs.DS↗
arXiv2015

Incorporating Road Networks into Territory Design

Given a set of basic areas, the territory design problem asks to create a predefined number of territories, each containing at least one basic area, such that an objective function is optimized. Desired properties of territories often include a reasonable balance, compact form, contiguity and small average journey times which are usually encoded in the objective function or formulated as constraints. We address the territory design problem by developing graph theoretic models that also consider the underlying road network. The derived graph models enable us to tackle the territory design problem by modifying graph partitioning algorithms and mixed integer programming formulations so that the objective of the planning problem is taken into account. We test and compare the algorithms on several real world instances.

math.OC↗
arXiv2015

n-Level Hypergraph Partitioning

We develop a multilevel algorithm for hypergraph partitioning that contracts the vertices one at a time and thus allows very high quality. This includes a rating function that avoids nonuniform vertex weights, an efficient "semi-dynamic" hypergraph data structure, a very fast coarsening algorithm, and two new local search algorithms. One is a $k$-way hypergraph adaptation of Fiduccia-Mattheyses local search and gives high quality at reasonable cost. The other is an adaptation of size-constrained label propagation to hypergraphs. Comparisons with hMetis and PaToH indicate that the new algorithm yields better quality over several benchmark sets and has a running time that is comparable to hMetis. Using label propagation local search is several times faster than hMetis and gives better quality than PaToH for a VLSI benchmark set.

cs.DS↗
arXiv2015

Practical Massively Parallel Sorting

Previous parallel sorting algorithms do not scale to the largest available machines, since they either have prohibitive communication volume or prohibitive critical path length. We describe algorithms that are a viable compromise and overcome this gap both in theory and practice. The algorithms are multi-level generalizations of the known algorithms sample sort and multiway mergesort. In particular our sample sort variant turns out to be very scalable. Some tools we develop may be of independent interest -- a simple, practical, and flexible sorting algorithm for small inputs working in logarithmic time, a near linear time optimal algorithm for solving a constrained bin packing problem, and an algorithm for data delivery, that guarantees a small number of message startups on each processor.

cs.DS↗
arXiv2015

Graph Partitioning for Independent Sets

Computing maximum independent sets in graphs is an important problem in computer science. In this paper, we develop an evolutionary algorithm to tackle the problem. The core innovations of the algorithm are very natural combine operations based on graph partitioning and local search algorithms. More precisely, we employ a state-of-the-art graph partitioner to derive operations that enable us to quickly exchange whole blocks of given independent sets. To enhance newly computed offsprings we combine our operators with a local search algorithm. Our experimental evaluation indicates that we are able to outperform state-of-the-art algorithms on a variety of instances.

cs.DS↗
arXiv2015

Parallel Graph Partitioning for Complex Networks

Processing large complex networks like social networks or web graphs has recently attracted considerable interest. In order to do this in parallel, we need to partition them into pieces of about equal size. Unfortunately, previous parallel graph partitioners originally developed for more regular mesh-like networks do not work well for these networks. This paper addresses this problem by parallelizing and adapting the label propagation technique originally developed for graph clustering. By introducing size constraints, label propagation becomes applicable for both the coarsening and the refinement phase of multilevel graph partitioning. We obtain very high quality by applying a highly parallel evolutionary algorithm to the coarsened graph. The resulting system is both more scalable and achieves higher quality than state-of-the-art systems like ParMetis or PT-Scotch. For large complex networks the performance differences are very big. For example, our algorithm can partition a web graph with 3.3 billion edges in less than sixteen seconds using 512 cores of a high performance cluster while producing a high quality partition -- none of the competing systems can handle this graph on our system.

cs.DC↗
arXiv2014

Exploiting citation networks for large-scale author name disambiguation

We present a novel algorithm and validation method for disambiguating author names in very large bibliographic data sets and apply it to the full Web of Science (WoS) citation index. Our algorithm relies only upon the author and citation graphs available for the whole period covered by the WoS. A pair-wise publication similarity metric, which is based on common co-authors, self-citations, shared references and citations, is established to perform a two-step agglomerative clustering that first connects individual papers and then merges similar clusters. This parameterized model is optimized using an h-index based recall measure, favoring the correct assignment of well-cited publications, and a name-initials-based precision using WoS metadata and cross-referenced Google Scholar profiles. Despite the use of limited metadata, we reach a recall of 87% and a precision of 88% with a preference for researchers with high h-index values. 47 million articles of WoS can be disambiguated on a single machine in less than a day. We develop an h-index distribution model, confirming that the prediction is in excellent agreement with the empirical data, and yielding insight into the utility of the h-index in real academic ranking scenarios.

cs.DL↗