GraphBLAS Pointers

November 20, 2025 · View on GitHub

Notation:

  • :star: if you're new to GraphBLAS, check out these pointers first
  • :hammer: theory-focused
  • :wrench: implementation-focused
  • :hammer_and_wrench: mix of theory and implementation
  • :book: detailed specification

Community sites

Selected readings and presentations

GraphBLAS design papers

Tutorials

Specifications

Algorithms

Generic

Traversals, max-flow, and shortest paths

Connected components

Triangle counting, k-truss, clustering coefficient, etc.

Formal language constarined path querying

Regular path querying (RPQ)

Context-free path querying (CFPQ)

Community detection

Other

Presentations

Overviews on GraphBLAS and linear algebra-based graph processing

Minisymposium at SIAM CSE'21: GraphBLAS: Tools, Algorithms, and Applications

Books

  • Graph Algorithms in the Language of Linear Algebra (SIAM, 2011) by Jeremy Kepner and John R. Gilbert
    • This is the best reference on the topic of linear algebra-based graph processing. However, note that GraphBLAS effort was not yet started when this book was written. Therefore, there are some differences between the notation of GraphBLAS documents and the one used in this book.
  • Mathematics of Big Data: Spreadsheets, Databases, Matrices, and Graphs (MIT Press, 2018) by Jeremy Kepner and Hayden Jananthan
    • An updated version of paper Mathematical Foundations of the GraphBLAS is reprinted in this book (Chapter 6, p81-113)
    • This book is currently the latest detailed reference on semiring-based computations, including graph algorithms. It also covers many other topics such as associative arrays. The book is not intended to be a GraphBLAS reference, but it can be used for providing a background in linear algebra (see e.g. Chapter 8, "Visualizing the Algebra of Associative Arrays").
  • Path Problems in Networks (Morgan & Claypool Publishers, 2010) by John S. Baras and George Theodorakopoulos.
    • This book is about the algebraic path problem – a semiring-based generalization of shortest path problem. The mathematical foundations of semiring-based graph analysis are described. Basic ideas to create new semirings to solve new problems are described.
    • The section 3.1 "Alternative viewpoints: paths and matrices" (p17-19) provides a matrix-based framework for the algebraic path problem which is highly relevant to GraphBLAS.
    • The table on pages 58-59 contains 29 different semirings and respective applied problems.

Implementations

Core implementations

Other implementations

Wrappers

See also the ongoing design of the GraphBLAS C++ API and its rgri reference implementation.

FalkorDB

RedisGraph

Graphulo

You can also find many papers, posters, and presentations in the Accumulo repository.

Events

yearIPDPS workshopHPEC
2023GrAPL 2023HPEC 2023
2022GrAPL 2022HPEC 2022
2021GrAPL 2021HPEC 2021
2020GrAPL 2020HPEC 2020
2019GrAPL 2019HPEC 2019
2018GABB 2018HPEC 2018
2017GABB 2017HPEC 2017
2016GABB 2016HPEC 2016
2015GABB 2015HPEC 2015
2014GABB 2014HPEC 2014
2013HPEC 2013

Typesetting

The nicematrix LaTeX package can be used to typeset block matrices.

Source code

The source of this page is available at https://github.com/GraphBLAS/GraphBLAS-Pointers.