Developing efficient implementations of Bellman-Ford and Forward-Backward graph algorithms for NEC SX-ACE

Abstract

The main goal of this work is to demonstrate that the development of data-intensive applications for vector systems is not only important and interesting, but is also very possible. In this paper we describe possible implementations of two fundamental graph-processing algorithms for an NEC SX-ACE vector computer: the Bellman-Ford algorithm for single source shortest paths computation and the Forward-Backward algorithm for strongly connected components detection. The proposed implementations have been developed and optimised in accordance with features and properties of the target architecture, which allowed them to achieve performance comparable to other traditional platforms, such as Intel Skylake, Intel Knight Landing or IBM Power processors.