Fast bidirectional shortest path on GPU

Abstract

The bidirectional shortest path problem has important applications in VLSI floor planning and other areas. We introduce a new algorithm to solve bidirectional shortest path problems using parallel architectures provided by general purpose computing on graphics processing units. The algorithm performs parallel searches from the source and sink using Dijkstra's classic approach modified with pruning and early termination. We achieve substantial speedup over a parallel method that performs a single parallel search on the GPGPU from the source to all other nodes but early terminates when the shortest path to the specified target node is found. Experimental results demonstrate a speedup of nearly 2Â over the parallel method that performs a parallel search from the source with early termination on the GPGPU.