Modeling the Parallelization of the Edmonds-Karp Algorithm and Application

Abstract

Many optimization problems can be reduced to the maximum flow problem in a network. However, the maximum flow problem is equivalent to the problem of the minimum cut, as shown by Fulkerson and Ford (Fulkerson & Ford, 1956). There are several algorithms of the graph’s cut, such as the Ford-Fulkerson algorithm (Ford & Fulkerson, 1962), the Edmonds-Karp algorithm (Edmonds & Karp, 1972) or the Goldberg-Tarjan algorithm (Goldberg & Tarjan, 1988). In this paper, we study the parallel computation of the Edmonds-Karp algorithm which is an optimized version of the Ford-Fulkerson algorithm. Indeed, this algorithm, when executed on large graphs, can be extremely slow, with a complexity of the order of O|V|.|E|2 (where |V| designates the number of vertices and |E| designates the number of the edges of the graph). So why we are studying its implementation on inexpensive parallel platforms such as OpenMp and GP-GPU. Our work also highlights the limits for parallel computing on this algorithm.