Computing transitive closure on systolic arrays of fixed size

Forming the transitive closure of a binary relation (or directed graph) is an important part of many algorithms. When the relation is represented by a bit matrix, the transitive closure can be efficiently computed in parallel in a systolic array. Various such arrays for computing the transitive closure have been proposed. They all have in common, though, that the size of the array must be proportional to the number of nodes. Here we propose two ways of computing the transitive closure of an arbitrarily big graph on a systolic array of fixed size. The first method is a simple partitioning of a well-known systolic algorithm for computing the transitive closure. The second is a block-structured algorithm for computing the transitive closure. This algorithm is suitable for execution on a systolic array, that can multiply fixed size bit matrices and compute transitive closure of graphs with a fixed number of nodes. The algorithm is, however, not limited to systolic array implementations; it works on any parallel architecture that can form the transitive closure and product of fixed-size bit matrices efficiently. The shortest path problem, for directed graphs with weighted edges, can also be solved for arbitrarily large graphs on a fixed-size systolic array in the same manner, devised above, as the transitive closure is computed.Original report number R89010.