Beyond BFS: A Comparative Study of Rooted Spanning Tree Algorithms on GPUs

📅 2026-03-12
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This work addresses the limitations of traditional BFS-based rooted spanning tree (RST) construction, which suffers from O(D) step complexity and poor parallel scalability on high-diameter and power-law graphs. The authors present the first GPU-optimized implementation of the Path Reversal RST (PR-RST) algorithm, integrating the GConn connectivity framework with Euler tour-based rooting, and introducing GPU-tailored optimizations including pointer jumping and broadcast enhancements. Experimental evaluation across more than ten real-world graph datasets demonstrates that the proposed method achieves up to 300× speedup over highly optimized BFS baselines, with particularly pronounced gains on high-diameter graphs. These results substantiate the efficiency and scalability of O(log n) step-complexity connectivity strategies in modern parallel architectures.

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📝 Abstract
Rooted spanning trees (RSTs) are a core primitive in parallel graph analytics, underpinning algorithms such as biconnected components and planarity testing. On GPUs, RST construction has traditionally relied on breadth-first search (BFS) due to its simplicity and work efficiency. However, BFS incurs an O(D) step complexity, which severely limits parallelism on high-diameter and power-law graphs. We present a comparative study of alternative RST construction strategies on modern GPUs. We introduce a GPU adaptation of the Path Reversal RST (PR-RST) algorithm, optimizing its pointer-jumping and broadcast operations for modern GPU architecture. In addition, we evaluate an integrated approach that combines a state-of-the-art connectivity framework (GConn) with Eulerian tour-based rooting. Across more than 10 real-world graphs, our results show that the GConn-based approach achieves up to 300x speedup over optimized BFS on high-diameter graphs. These findings indicate that the O(log n) step complexity of connectivity-based methods can outweigh their structural overhead on modern hardware, motivating a rethinking of RST construction in GPU graph analytics.
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Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.

Rooted Spanning Tree
GPU
BFS
Step Complexity
Parallel Graph Analytics
Innovation

Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.

Rooted Spanning Tree
GPU Graph Algorithms
Path Reversal
Connectivity Framework
Eulerian Tour
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