In search of the fastest concurrent union-find algorithm

Alistarh D-A, Fedorov A, Koval N. 2020. In search of the fastest concurrent union-find algorithm. 23rd International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems. OPODIS: International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems, LIPIcs, vol. 153, 15:1-15:16.

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Author
Department
Series Title
LIPIcs
Abstract
Union-Find (or Disjoint-Set Union) is one of the fundamental problems in computer science; it has been well-studied from both theoretical and practical perspectives in the sequential case. Recently, there has been mounting interest in analyzing this problem in the concurrent scenario, and several asymptotically-efficient algorithms have been proposed. Yet, to date, there is very little known about the practical performance of concurrent Union-Find. This work addresses this gap. We evaluate and analyze the performance of several concurrent Union-Find algorithms and optimization strategies across a wide range of platforms (Intel, AMD, and ARM) and workloads (social, random, and road networks, as well as integrations into more complex algorithms). We first observe that, due to the limited computational cost, the number of induced cache misses is the critical determining factor for the performance of existing algorithms. We introduce new techniques to reduce this cost by storing node priorities implicitly and by using plain reads and writes in a way that does not affect the correctness of the algorithms. Finally, we show that Union-Find implementations are an interesting application for Transactional Memory (TM): one of the fastest algorithm variants we discovered is a sequential one that uses coarse-grained locking with the lock elision optimization to reduce synchronization cost and increase scalability.
Publishing Year
Date Published
2020-02-01
Proceedings Title
23rd International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems
Publisher
Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik
Volume
153
Page
15:1-15:16
Conference
OPODIS: International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems
Conference Location
Neuchatal, Switzerland
Conference Date
2019-12-17 – 2019-12-19
ISSN
IST-REx-ID

Cite this

Alistarh D-A, Fedorov A, Koval N. In search of the fastest concurrent union-find algorithm. In: 23rd International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems. Vol 153. Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik; 2020:15:1-15:16. doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2019.15
Alistarh, D.-A., Fedorov, A., & Koval, N. (2020). In search of the fastest concurrent union-find algorithm. In 23rd International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (Vol. 153, p. 15:1-15:16). Neuchatal, Switzerland: Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik. https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2019.15
Alistarh, Dan-Adrian, Alexander Fedorov, and Nikita Koval. “In Search of the Fastest Concurrent Union-Find Algorithm.” In 23rd International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems, 153:15:1-15:16. Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik, 2020. https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2019.15.
D.-A. Alistarh, A. Fedorov, and N. Koval, “In search of the fastest concurrent union-find algorithm,” in 23rd International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems, Neuchatal, Switzerland, 2020, vol. 153, p. 15:1-15:16.
Alistarh D-A, Fedorov A, Koval N. 2020. In search of the fastest concurrent union-find algorithm. 23rd International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems. OPODIS: International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems, LIPIcs, vol. 153, 15:1-15:16.
Alistarh, Dan-Adrian, et al. “In Search of the Fastest Concurrent Union-Find Algorithm.” 23rd International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems, vol. 153, Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik, 2020, p. 15:1-15:16, doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2019.15.
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2020-03-23
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