README.md

FREIGHT: Fast stREamInG Hypergraph parTitioning

FREIGHT is a streaming algorithm for hypergraph partitioning which is based on the widely-known graph-based algorithm Fennel. By using an efficient data structure, we make the overall running of FREIGHT linearly dependent on the pin-count of the hypergraph and the memory consumption linearly dependent on the numbers of nets and blocks. The results of our extensive experimentation showcase the promising performance of FREIGHT as a highly efficient and effective solution for streaming hypergraph partitioning. Our algorithm demonstrates competitive running time with the Hashing algorithm, with a difference of a maximum factor of four observed on three fourths of the instances. Significantly, our findings highlight the superiority of FREIGHT over all existing (buffered) streaming algorithms and even the in-memory algorithm HYPE, with respect to both cut-net and connectivity measures. This indicates that our proposed algorithm is a promising hypergraph partitioning tool to tackle the challenge posed by large-scale and dynamic data processing.

This repository is associated with the following paper:

• "FREIGHT: Fast Streaming Hypergraph Partitioning", which has been published as a full paper at SEA 2023. This paper was the recipient of the SEA 2023 best paper award. Additionally, you can find a technical report and our SEA 2023 slides.

If you publish results using our algorithms, please acknowledge our work by citing our paper:

@InProceedings{FREIGHT2023,
  author ={Kamal Eyubov and Marcelo Fonseca Faraj and Christian Schulz},
  title ={{FREIGHT: Fast Streaming Hypergraph Partitioning}},
  booktitle ={21st International Symposium on Experimental Algorithms (SEA 2023)},
  pages ={15:1--15:16},
  series ={Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN ={978-3-95977-279-2},
  ISSN ={1868-8969},
  year ={2023},
  volume ={265},
  editor ={Georgiadis, Loukas},
  publisher ={Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address ={Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL ={https://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2023/18365},
  URN ={urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-183657},
  doi ={10.4230/LIPIcs.SEA.2023.15},
}

Detailed experimental results published in our paper are available here.

Repository Structure

This repository contains the following folders:

• code_for_hypergraphs/ - source code of FREIGHT
• code_for_graphs/ - source code of a version of FREIGHT optimized for graphs
• experimental_results/ - folder containing full experimental results reported in the paper

Installation Notes

Requirements

• C++-17 ready compiler
• CMake
• Scons (http://www.scons.org/)
• Argtable (http://argtable.sourceforge.net/)

Building FREIGHT

To build the software, clone this repository, enter the intended code base and run

./compile.sh

Alternatively, you can use the standard CMake build process.

The resulting binary is located in the deploy/ subdirectory within the appropriate code base.
The executables freight_cut and freight_con optimize for cut-net and connectivity, respectively. For partitioning graphs, the corresponding executable is named freight_graphs.

Running FREIGHT for hypergraphs

To partition a hypergraph in net-list format using FREIGHT, run

./freight_con <hypergraph filename> --k=<number of blocks> 
./freight_cut <hypergraph filename> --k=<number of blocks> 

For a complete list of parameters alongside with descriptions, run:

./freight_con --help
./freight_cut --help

For a characterization of the used hypergraph format, please see this page.

Running FREIGHT for graphs

To partition a graph in METIS format using FREIGHT, run

./freight_graphs <graph filename> --k=<number of blocks> 

For a complete list of parameters alongside with descriptions, run:

./freight_graphs --help

For a description of the graph format, please have a look at the KaHiP manual.

Licensing

FREIGHT is free software provided under the MIT License.