Solving All-Pairs Shortest-Paths Problem in Large Graphs Using Apache Spark

Abstract: Algorithms for computing All-Pairs Shortest-Paths (APSP) are critical building blocks underlying many practical applications. The standard sequential algorithms, such as Floyd-Warshall and Johnson, quickly become infeasible for large input graphs, necessitating parallel approaches. In this work, we provide detailed analysis of parallel APSP performance on distributed memory clusters with Apache Spark. The Spark model allows for a portable and easy to deploy distributed implementation, and hence is attractive from the end-user point of view. We propose four different APSP implementations for large undirected weighted graphs, which differ in complexity and degree of reliance on techniques outside of pure Spark API. We demonstrate that Spark is able to handle APSP problems with over 200,000 vertices on a 1024-core cluster, and can compete with a naive MPI-based solution. However, our best performing solver requires auxiliary shared persistent storage, and is over two times slower than optimized MPI-based solver.