GraphBLAS – Graph algorithms in the language of linear algebra

Goals and premises

The GraphBLAS Forum is an open effort to define standard building blocks for graph algorithms in the language of linear algebra.

We believe that the state of the art in constructing a large collection of graph algorithms in terms of linear algebraic operations is mature enough to support the emergence of a standard set of primitive building blocks. We believe that it is critical to move quickly and define such a standard, thereby freeing up researchers to innovate and diversify at the level of higher level algorithms and graph analytics applications. This effort was inspired by the Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms (BLAS) of dense Linear Algebra, and hence our working name for this standard is “the GraphBLAS”.

A key insight behind this work is that when a graph is represented by a sparse incidence or adjacency matrix, sparse matrix-vector multiplication is a step of breadth first search. By generalizing the pair of scalar operations involved in the linear algebra computations to define a semiring, we can extend the range of these primitives to support a wide range of parallel graph algorithms.

More information

A C reference implementation, SuiteSparse:GraphBLAS, can be downloaded from here .

Our 2013 manifesto for this project can be found here .

The mathematical definition of the GraphBLAS can be found here .

Background information about graphs in the language of linear algebra can be found in the book: Graph Algorithms in the Language of Linear Algebra , edited by J. Kepner and J. Gilbert, SIAM, 2011.

A straw man proposal for the GraphBLAS can be found here .

Gabor Szarnyas maintains a list of GraphBLAS pointers with lots of tutorial material.

Application Program Interface (API)

A short paper from IPDPSW'17 describes the rationale behind the C API design.

Version 1.0 (provisional) of theC language API is released on May 29, 2017 at the GABB workshop [1] .

Version 1.1.0 (provisional) is released on November 14, 2017.

Version 1.2.0 (final) is released on May 18, 2018. It can be downloaded from here . This is only available for archival purposes, you should use the latest version 1.3.0 below.

Version 1.3.0 (final) is released on September 25, 2019. It can be downloaded from here .

Reference Implementations

• SuiteSparse:GraphBLAS (latest version) can be downloaded from here .

• IBM GraphBLAS

Projects developing implementations of the GraphBLAS

• MPI/C++ Combinatorial BLAS (CombBLAS)

• Java Graphulo

• Matlab/Octave D4M

• GPI (IBM) and IBM GraphBLAS

• GraphPad (Intel)

• GraphBLAS Template Library (SEI/Indiana)

• SuiteSparse Graph BLAS (Texas A&M)

• GraphBLAST (UC Davis and LBNL)

Graph analysis systems that integrate GraphBLAS

• RedisGraph: A Graph Database Module for Redis

• pggraphblas: High Performance Graph Processing with PostgreSQL

Workshops and conferences featuring the GraphBLAS (reverse chronological)

• GrAPL 2020 @IPDPS : Submission deadline February 1, 2020

• SC2019 BOF on HPC Graph Toolkits and the GraphBLAS Forum : Session is Wed 20 Nov, 5:15pm - 6:45pm

• HPEC 2019 :

• GrAPL 2019 @IPDPS :

• GraphChallenge 2018

• HPEC 2018

• GABB 2018 @IPDPS

• GraphChallenge 2017

• HPEC 2017

• GABB 2017 @IPDPS

• HPEC 2016

• Minisymposium 2016 @SIAM Annual Meeting : SIAM Presentations

• GABB 2016 @IPDPS

• HPEC 2015

• GABB 2015 @IPDPS

• HPEC 2014

• GABB 2014 @IPDPS

• HPEC 2013

Blogs (and other interesting discussions) on GraphBLAS

• Tim Davis's GraphBLAS blog
• A good discussion thread on dropping explicit zeros (fall 2019)

GraphBLAS mailing list

If you wish to join our effort (or just watch it), please send an email message to our mailing list coordinator .

Steering Committee (alphabetical)

• David Bader (NJIT)

• Aydin Buluc (Berkeley Lab)

• John Gilbert (UC Santa Barbara)

• Jeremy Kepner (MIT Lincoln Laboratory Supercomputing Center)

• Tim Mattson (Intel)

• Henning Meyerhenke (KIT)