An Efficient and Balanced Graph Partition Algorithm for the Subgraph-Centric Programming Model on Large-scale Power-law Graphs

Nowadays, the parallel processing of power-law graphs is one of the biggest challenges in the field of graph computation. The subgraph-centric programming model is a promising approach and has been applied in many state-of-the-art distributed graph computing frameworks. The graph partition algorithm plays an important role in the overall performance of subgraph-centric frameworks. However, traditional graph partition algorithms have significant difficulties in processing large-scale power-law graphs. The major problem is the communication bottleneck found in many subgraph-centric frameworks. Detailed analysis indicates that the communication bottleneck is caused by the huge communication volume or the extreme message imbalance among partitioned subgraphs. The traditional partition algorithms do not consider both factors at the same time, especially on power-law graphs. In this paper, we propose a novel efficient and balanced vertex-cut graph partition algorithm (EBV) which grants appropriate weights to the overall communication cost and communication balance. We observe that the number of replicated vertices and the balance of edge and vertex assignment have a great influence on communication patterns of distributed subgraph-centric frameworks, which further affect the overall performance. Based on this insight, We design an evaluation function that quantifies the proportion of replicated vertices and the balance of edges and vertices assignments as important parameters. Besides, we sort the order of edge processing by the sum of end-vertices' degrees from small to large. Experiments show that EBV reduces replication factor and communication by at least 21.8% and 23.7% respectively than other self-based partition algorithms. When deployed in the subgraph-centric framework, it reduces the running time on power-law graphs by an average of 16.8% compared with the state-of-the-art partition algorithm. Our results indicate that EBV has a great potential in improving the performance of subgraph-centric frameworks for the parallel large-scale power-law graph processing.