CSE Seminar Announcement

The GraphBLAS API for Programming Graph Algorithms in the Language of Linear Algebra

Tuesday, July 25, 2017
4403 Siebel Center
4:00pm - 5:00pm

Jose` E. Moreira
Distinguished Research Staff Member
IBM Research

Abstract

It is well known that graph algorithms can be expressed in terms of linear algebra operations, following a rigorous mathematical formulation based on the algebra of semirings. Various independent efforts on implementing libraries supporting this model have sprouted through the years. The purpose of the GraphBLAS Forum is to standardize linear-algebraic building blocks for graph computations.  An important part of this standardization effort is to translate the mathematical specification into an actual Application Programming Interface (API) that (i) is faithful to the mathematics and (ii) enables efficient implementations on modern hardware. This talk will explain the approach taken by the C language specification subcommittee and presents the main concepts, constructs, and objects within the GraphBLAS API. Use of the API is illustrated by showing an implementation of the betweenness centrality algorithm.

Biography

Dr. Moreira joined the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center after receiving his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1995. At IBM, he has worked on a variety of high-performance computing projects. He was system software architect for the Blue Gene/L supercomputer and chief architect of the Commercial Scale Out project. He currently works on the architecture of Power processors and is an author of The GraphBLAS C API Specification. He is author or coauthor of over 100 technical papers and patents. Dr. Moreira is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and a Distinguished Scientist of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).