Scalable Graph Neural Networks via Bidirectional Propagation
Abstract
Graph Neural Networks (GNN) is an emerging field for learning on non-Euclidean data. Recently, there has been increased interest in designing GNN that scales to large graphs. Most existing methods use "graph sampling" or "layer-wise sampling" techniques to reduce training time. However, these methods still suffer from degrading performance and scalability problems when applying to graphs with billions of edges. This paper presents GBP, a scalable GNN that utilizes a localized bidirectional propagation process from both the feature vectors and the training/testing nodes. Theoretical analysis shows that GBP is the first method that achieves sub-linear time complexity for both the precomputation and the training phases. An extensive empirical study demonstrates that GBP achieves state-of-the-art performance with significantly less training/testing time. Most notably, GBP can deliver superior performance on a graph with over 60 million nodes and 1.8 billion edges in less than half an hour on a single machine.
Benchmark Results
Tested on 3 datasets 9 baseline values reported too low
Tables show presented results in global context (best 3 papers + GCN + MLP).
Classic
| # | Model | Accuracy ↑ | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GraphSAGE+CNA | 0.9418
±0.0033 | |
| 2 | GCN+CNA | 0.9366
±0.0048 | |
| 3 | TransformerConv | 0.9350
±0.0058 | |
| 21 | GCN | 0.9004 best reported | best at pub: SplineCNN: Fast Geometric Deep Learning with Continuous B-Spline Kernels (2017) best today: Understanding Heterophily for Graph Neural Networks (ICML 2024) |
| 39 | SAGE | 0.8911
±0.0012 | |
| 44 | GAT | 0.8897
±0.0014 best reported | best at pub: Learned Low Precision Graph Neural Networks (2020) |
| 108 | APPNP | 0.8787 best reported | best at pub: Tackling Over-Smoothing for General Graph Convolutional Networks (2020) best today: Feature Transportation Improves Graph Neural Networks (AAAI 2023) |
| 223 | SGC | 0.8509
±0.0648 best reported | best at pub: Deep Learning on Graphs: A Survey (2018) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 308 | GBP | 0.8390
±0.0070 | This paper |
| 345 | GDC | 0.8360
±0.0020 best reported | best today: Transformers from Diffusion: A Unified Framework for Neural Message Passing (JMLR 2024) |
| 473 | PPRGo | 0.8240
±0.0020 | This paper |
| 550 | GraphSAINT | 0.8182
±0.0022 best reported | best today: Toward a Unified Geometry Understanding: Riemannian Diffusion Framework for Graph Generation and Prediction (NeurIPS 2025) |
| 672 | LADIES | 0.7960
±0.0050 | This paper |
| 724 | MLP | 0.7768 |
| # | Model | Accuracy ↑ | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CNA | 0.9575
±0.0058 | |
| 2 | IS-GIB | 0.9390
±0.0187 | |
| 3 | EERM | 0.9112
±0.0145 | |
| 20 | APPNP | 0.8142
±0.0026 best reported | best at pub: Tackling Over-Smoothing for General Graph Convolutional Networks (2020) best today: Feature Expansion for Graph Neural Networks (ICML 2023) |
| 35 | GAT | 0.8080
±0.0026 best reported | best at pub: Tackling Over-Smoothing for General Graph Convolutional Networks (2020) best today: Feature Expansion for Graph Neural Networks (ICML 2023) |
| 44 | GCN | 0.8033
±0.0088 best reported | best at pub: Tackling Over-Smoothing for General Graph Convolutional Networks (2020) |
| 61 | GraphSAGE | 0.7923
±0.0053 | |
| 96 | SGC | 0.7765
±0.0012 best reported | best at pub: Deep Learning on Graphs: A Survey (2018) |
| 280 | GDC | 0.7340
±0.0030 best reported | best today: Discovering Data Geometry: Energy-Driven Neural Diffusion (ICLR 2023) |
| 342 | GBP | 0.7290
±0.0050 | This paper |
| 350 | MLP | 0.7289
±0.0010 | |
| 530 | PPRGo | 0.7130
±0.0030 | This paper |
| 589 | GraphSAINT | 0.7050
±0.0040 | This paper |
| 669 | LADIES | 0.6860
±0.0030 | This paper |
| # | Model | Accuracy ↑ | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | LGTL | 0.9518
±0.0011 | |
| 2 | MixHop (LO) | 0.9513
±0.0038 | |
| 3 | GraphSAGE (LO) | 0.9511
±0.0036 | |
| 17 | APPNP | 0.9355
±0.0060 best reported | best at pub: Tackling Over-Smoothing for General Graph Convolutional Networks (2020) |
| 18 | GCN | 0.9296
±0.0015 best reported | best at pub: Tackling Over-Smoothing for General Graph Convolutional Networks (2020) |
| 20 | GAT | 0.9233
±0.0018 best reported | best at pub: Tackling Over-Smoothing for General Graph Convolutional Networks (2020) |
| 116 | SAGE | 0.8881
±0.0015 | |
| 141 | SGC | 0.7900
±0.0010 | prev best: Deep Learning on Graphs: A Survey (2018) |
| 210 | MLP | 0.8690
±0.0074 | |
| 400 | GBP | 0.8060
±0.0040 | This paper |
| 448 | PPRGo | 0.8000
±0.0040 | This paper |
| 625 | GDC | 0.7870
±0.0040 best reported | best today: Discovering Data Geometry: Energy-Driven Neural Diffusion (ICLR 2023) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 662 | GraphSAINT | 0.7820
±0.0080 | This paper |
| 740 | LADIES | 0.7700
±0.0050 | This paper |
