A Distributed Multilevel Force-Directed Algorithm

The use of graph visualization approaches to present and analyze complex data is taking a leading role in conveying information and knowledge to users in many application domains. This creates the need of developing efficient and effective algorithms that automatically compute graph layouts. In this respect, force-directed algorithms are arguably among the most popular graph layout techniques. Aimed at leveraging the potential of modern distributed graph algorithms platforms, we present MULTI-GILA, the first multilevel force-directed graph visualization algorithm based on a vertex-centric computation paradigm. We implemented MULTI-GILA using the Apache Giraph platform. Experiments show that it can be successfully applied to compute high quality layouts of very large graphs on inexpensive cloud computing platforms.