Re: [boost] Boost.Graph Metagraph project

Subject: Re: [boost] Boost.Graph Metagraph project
From: Gordon Woodhull (gordon_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-01-16 03:10:17

On Jan 15, 2011, at 11:23 PM, caustik wrote:

> This sounds relevant to my interests -- Can these meta-graphs be recursive?
> In other words, can a meta-graph contain a subgraph of itself as a node?

Those sorts of higher-order graph problems are why I started thinking about metagraphs many years ago.  When I found out about MPL I realized that all kinds of  - graphs at levels of detail, subgraphs, bipartite graphs, graphs within graphs, graphs of graphs - could be implemented by using graph metadata graphs to describe the structure of the runtime graphs.

The higher-order runtime graph data structure ("metagraph") is no longer simply vertices and edges, it is many types, but the way those types are connected is a compile-time graph "pattern".  (Or even several overlaid patterns.  For instance, a node in one pattern is also a subgraph in another pattern.)

Expect progress on this in 2011. 

> Also curious if, and to what extent, the project might support MPI?

Not sure which way you mean this.

* MPL.Graph is purely compile-time (wish we could parallelize that!).  

* I haven't thought about parallelizing metagraphs yet because I haven't written them yet - I'll be sure to get some ideas from Parallel BGL.

* Joel Falcou has this intriguing Quaff project to build up compile-time skeletons of data flow for parallelized algorithms and IIRC we talked at BoostCon about how it would be neat to generalize skeletons to compile-time graphs.  Anywhere you know the whole contents of the graph at compile time - in that case, the contents of some expressions - you might want to consider MPL.Graph for paying the abstraction penalty upfront instead of passing it on to your users.

Thanks for the interest!
Gordon