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An experimental study of a simple, distributed edge-coloring algorithm

Published: 31 December 2004 Publication History

Abstract

We conduct an experimental analysis of a distributed randomized algorithm for edge coloring simple undirected graphs. The algorithm is extremely simple yet, according to the probabilistic analysis, it computes nearly optimal colorings very quickly [Grable and Panconesi 1997]. We test the algorithm on a number of random as well as nonrandom graph families.The test cases were chosen based on two objectives: (i) to provide insights into the worst-case behavior (in terms of time and quality) of the algorithm and (ii) to test the performance of the algorithm with instances that are likely to arise in practice. Our main results include the following:(1) The empirical results obtained compare very well with the recent empirical results reported by other researchers [Durand et al. 1994, 1998; Jain and Werth 1995].(2) The empirical results confirm the bounds on the running time and the solution quality as claimed in the theoretical paper. Our results show that for certain classes of graphs the algorithm is likely to perform much better than the analysis suggests.(3) The results demonstrate that the algorithm might be well suited (from a theoretical as well as practical standpoint) for edge coloring graphs quickly and efficiently in a distributed setting.Based on our empirical study, we propose a simple modification of the original algorithm with substantially improved performance in practice.

References

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Dubhashi, D., Grable, D., and Panconesi, A. 1998. Nearly-optimal, distributed edge-coloring via the nibble method. TCS 203, 4, 225--251. A special issue for the best papers of the 3rd European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 95).
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Durand, D., Jain, R., and Tseytlin, D. 1994. Distributed Scheduling Algorithms to Improve the Performance of Parallel Data Transfers. In ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News. ACM Press, 35--40. Special issue on Input/Output in Parallel Computer Systems.
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Durand, D., Jain, R., and Tseytlin, D. 1998. Applying randomized edge-coloring algorithms to distributed communications: An experimental study. TCS 203, 4, 225--251. A special issue for the best papers of the 3rd European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 95).
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Grable, D. and Panconesi, A. 1997. Nearly optimal distributed edge-coloring in o(log log n) rounds. RSA 10, 3 (May), 385--405. Also In Proceedings of the 9th ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA), 1997, pp. 278--285.
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cover image ACM Journal of Experimental Algorithmics
ACM Journal of Experimental Algorithmics  Volume 9, Issue
2004
189 pages
ISSN:1084-6654
EISSN:1084-6654
DOI:10.1145/1005813
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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 31 December 2004
Published in JEA Volume 9

Author Tags

  1. Distributed algorithms
  2. edge coloring
  3. experimental analysis of algorithms
  4. high performance computing
  5. randomized algorithms
  6. scheduling

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