The Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms, introduced over 30 years ago, had a transformative effect on software for linear algebra. With the BLAS, researchers spend less time mapping algorithms onto specific features of hardware platforms and more time on interesting new algorithms.

Would it be practical to define an analogous set of basic building blocks for graph algorithms? Can we define a core set of mathematical primitives from which we can build most (if not all) important graph algorithms? If we can agree on the mathematical foundations, how would these interact with the data structures used in graph algorithms and result in an API the graph algorithms research community could support?

These questions will be the topic for the third “Graph Algorithms Building Blocks” workshop. Our goal is an interactive workshop where the full range of issues behind “Graph Algorithms Building Blocks” will be explored. We want an interactive “workshop” so papers that report preliminary results and unproven but interesting ideas will be considered.