Cover Edge-Based Novel Triangle Counting

Listing and counting triangles in graphs is a key algorithmic kernel for network analyses, including community detection, clustering coefficients, k-trusses, and triangle centrality. In this paper, we propose the novel concept of a cover-edge set that can be used to find triangles more efficiently. Leveraging the breadth-first search (BFS) method, we can quickly generate a compact cover-edge set. Novel sequential and parallel triangle counting algorithms that employ cover-edge sets are presented. The novel sequential algorithm performs competitively with the fastest previous approaches on both real and synthetic graphs, such as those from the Graph500 Benchmark and the MIT/Amazon/IEEE Graph Challenge. We implement 22 sequential algorithms for performance evaluation and comparison. At the same time, we employ OpenMP to parallelize 11 sequential algorithms, presenting an in-depth analysis of their parallel performance. Furthermore, we develop a distributed parallel algorithm that can asymptotically reduce communication on massive graphs. In our estimate from massive-scale Graph500 graphs, our distributed parallel algorithm can reduce the communication on a scale 36 graph by 1156x and on a scale 42 graph by 2368x. Comprehensive experiments are conducted on the recently launched Intel Xeon 8480+ processor and shed light on how graph attributes, such as topology, diameter, and degree distribution, can affect the performance of these algorithms.