A spanning tree in a graph is the smallest connected spanning subgraph. Given a graph, how does one find the smallest (i.e., least number of edges) 2-connected spanning subgraph (connectivity refers to both edge and vertex connectivity, if not specified) ? Unfortunately, the problem is known to be NP -hard. We consider the problem of finding a better approximation to the smallest 2-connected subgraph, by an efficient algorithm. For 2-edge connectivity our algorithm guarantees a solution that is no more than 3 2 times the optimal. For 2-vertex connectivity our algorithm guarantees a solution that is no more than 5 3 times the optimal. The previous best approximation factor is 2 for each of these problems. The new algorithms (and their analyses) depend upon a structure called a carving of a graph, which is of independent interest. We show that approximating the optimal solution to within an additive constant is NP -hard as well. We also consider the case where the graph has edge weigh...

In this paper, we present deterministic parallel algorithms for the coarse grained multicomputer (CGM) and bulk-synchronous parallel computer (BSP) models which solve the following well known graph problems: (1) list ranking, (2) Euler tour construction, (3) computing the connected components and spanning forest, (4) lowest common ancestor preprocessing, (5) tree contraction and expression tree evaluation, (6) computing an ear decomposition or open ear decomposition, (7) 2-edge connectivity and biconnectivity (testing and component computation), and (8) cordal graph recognition (finding a perfect elimination ordering). The algorithms for Problems 1-7 require O(log p) communication rounds and linear sequential work per round. Our results for Problems 1 and 2, i.e.they are fully scalable, and for Problems hold for arbitrary ratios n p 3-8 it is assumed that n p,>0, which is true for all commercially

this paper and supplied many helpful comments. This research was supported in part by NSF grants DCR-85-11713, CCR-86-05353, and CCR-88-14977, and by DARPA contract N00039-84-C-0165.

We present a simple and implementable algorithm that computes a minimum spanning tree of an undirected weighted graph G = (V, E) of n = |V| vertices and m = |E| edges on an EREW PRAM in O(log 3=2 n) time using n+m processors. This represents a substantial improvement in the running time over the previous results for this problem using at the same time the weakest of the PRAM models. It also implies the existence of algorithms having the same complexity bounds for the EREW PRAM, for connectivity, ear decomposition, biconnectivity, strong orientation, st-numbering and Euler tours problems.

. We present a parallel algorithm for finding triconnected components on a CRCW PRAM. The time complexity of our algorithm is O(log n) and the processor-time product is O((m + n) log log n) where n is the number of vertices, and m is the number of edges of the input graph. Our algorithm, like other parallel algorithms for this problem, is based on open ear decomposition but it employs a new technique, local replacement, to improve the complexity. Only the need to use the subroutines for connected components and integer sorting, for which no optimal parallel algorithm that runs in O(log n) time is known, prevents our algorithm from achieving optimality. 1. Introduction. A connected graph G = (V; E) is k-vertex connected if it has at least (k + 1) vertices and removal of any (k \Gamma 1) vertices leaves the graph connected. Designing efficient algorithms for determining the connectivity of graphs has been a subject of great interest in the last two decades. Applications of graph connect...

We present a new algorithm for finding the triconnected components of an undirected graph. The algorithm is based on a method of searching graphs called ‘open ear decomposition’. A parallel implementation of the algorithm on a CRCW PRAM runs in O(log 2 n) parallel time using O(n + m) processors, where n is the number of vertices and m is the number of edges in the graph.

This report deals with a parallel algorithmic technique that has proved to be very useful in the design of efficient parallel algorithms for several problems on undirected graphs. We describe this method for searching undirected graphs, called "open ear decomposition", and we relate this decomposition to graph biconnectivity. We present an efficient parallel algorithm for finding this decomposition and we relate it to a sequential algorithm based on depth-first search. We then apply open ear decomposition to obtain an efficient parallel algorithm for testing graph triconnectivity and for finding the triconnnected components of a graph.

The ability to provide uniform shared-memory access to a significant number of processors in a single SMP node brings us much closer to the ideal PRAM parallel computer. In this paper, we develop new techniques for designing a uniform shared-memory algorithm from a PRAM algorithm and present the results of an extensive experimental study demonstrating that the resulting programs scale nearly linearly across a significant range of processors (from 1 to 64) and across the entire range of instance sizes tested. This linear speedup with the number of processors is, to our knowledge, the first ever attained in practice for intricate combinatorial problems. The example we present in detail here is a graph decomposition algorithm that also requires the computation of a spanning tree; this problem is not only of interest in its own right, but is representative of a large class of irregular combinatorial problems that have simple and efficient sequential implementations and fast PRAM algorithms, but have no known efficient parallel implementations. Our results thus offer promise for bridging the gap between the theory and practice of shared-memory parallel algorithms.

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We present a new algorithm based on open ear decomposition for testing vertex four-connectivity and for finding all separating triplets in a triconnected graph. A sequential implementation of our algorithm runs in O(n 2) time and a parallel implementation runs in O(log 2 n) time using O(n 2) processors on an ARBITRARY CRCW PRAM, where n is the number of vertices in the graph. This improves previous bounds for the problem for both the sequential and parallel cases. The sequential time bound is the best possible, to within a constant factor, if the input is specified in adjacency matrix form, or if the input graph is dense. 1.