This directory contains postscript files that should help you
understand and make effective use of Chaco.  The most important
document is the user's guide, "Users_Guide.ps".  This gives 
directions for installing and using the code, describes the user
interface and gives a brief overview of the algorithms used.
The correct reference for the user's guide is
  "The Chaco user's guide: Version 2.0", Tech. Rep. SAND94-2692,
  Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, July 1995.

Other files in this directory give detailed explanations of 
several of the new partitioning algorithms implemented in Chaco.
"Spectral_Theory.ps" gives a formal mathematical derivation of the
multidimensional spectral methods.  This is also the appropriate place
to learn about how spectral methods use edge and vertex weights.
This paper has been published as
  "An improved spectral graph partitioning algorithm for mapping parallel
  computations", SIAM J. Sci. Comput., 16(2):452-469, 1995. To appear.

A less formal discussion of the spectral material (without weights) is
given in "Spectral_Overview.ps", which appeared as
  "An improved spectral load balancing method", in Proc. 6th SIAM Conf.
  Parallel Processing for Scientific Computing, SIAM, March 1993, pp. 953-961.

The multilevel partitioner is described in "Multilevel.ps", along with a
detailed description of the variant of the Kernighan-Lin/Fiduccia-Mattheyses
refinement scheme used in Chaco.  This paper will appear as
  "A multilevel algorithm for partitioning graphs", Proc. Supercomputing '95,
  ACM, December 1995.

Some of our empirical experience with the algorithms used in Chaco is
described in "Empirical.ps", which was published as
  "An empirical study of static load balancing algorithms", in Proc.
  Scalable High Perf. Comput. Conf., IEEE, May 1994, pp. 682-685.

A detailed discussion of terminal propagation and its ability to improve
locality in partitions can be found in "Term_Prop.ps", which will be
published as
  "Enhancing data locality by using terminal propagation", Proc. 29th
  Hawaii Conf. System Sciences, IEEE, January 1996.

