Parallel community detection for massive graphs

Abstract

Tackling the current volume of graph-structured data requires parallel tools. We extend our work on analyzing such massive graph data with the first massively parallel algorithm for community detection that scales to current data sizes, scaling to graphs of over 122 million vertices and nearly 2 billion edges in under 7300 seconds on a massively multithreaded Cray XMT. Our algorithm achieves moderate parallel scalability without sacrificing sequential operational complexity. Community detection partitions a graph into subgraphs more densely connected within the subgraph than to the rest of the graph. We take an agglomerative approach similar to Clauset, Newman, and Moore's sequential algorithm, merging pairs of connected intermediate subgraphs to optimize different graph properties. Working in parallel opens new approaches to high performance. On smaller data sets, we find the output's modularity compares well with the standard sequential algorithms. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.