Breaking the Limits of Message Passing Graph Neural Networks
Abstract
Since the Message Passing (Graph) Neural Networks (MPNNs) have a linear complexity with respect to the number of nodes when applied to sparse graphs, they have been widely implemented and still raise a lot of interest even though their theoretical expressive power is limited to the first order Weisfeiler-Lehman test (1-WL). In this paper, we show that if the graph convolution supports are designed in spectral-domain by a non-linear custom function of eigenvalues and masked with an arbitrary large receptive field, the MPNN is theoretically more powerful than the 1-WL test and experimentally as powerful as a 3-WL existing models, while remaining spatially localized. Moreover, by designing custom filter functions, outputs can have various frequency components that allow the convolution process to learn different relationships between a given input graph signal and its associated properties. So far, the best 3-WL equivalent graph neural networks have a computational complexity in $ (n^3)$ with memory usage in $ (n^2)$, consider non-local update mechanism and do not provide the spectral richness of output profile. The proposed method overcomes all these aforementioned problems and reaches state-of-the-art results in many downstream tasks.
Benchmark Results
Tested on 3 datasets 1 baseline value reported too low
Tables show presented results in global context (best 3 papers + GCN + MLP).
TU Dortmund
| # | Model | Accuracy ↑ | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | MSH-GNN | 0.9910
±0.0030 | |
| 2 | ID-GNN+BEC | 0.9830
±0.0360 | |
| 3 | SupCosine | 0.9830
±0.0250 | |
| 39 | GIN | 0.9330
±0.0290 best reported | best at pub: CogDL: A Comprehensive Library for Graph Deep Learning (WWW 2021) best today: ProtGNN: Towards Self-Explaining Graph Neural Networks (AAAI 2021) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 63 | GCN | 0.8910
±0.0581 | prev best: Hierarchical Graph Capsule Network (AAAI 2020) Improvement within reported uncertainty; not highlighted. |
| 128 | GNNML3 | 0.9090
±0.0546 | This paper |
| 140 | PPGN | 0.9060
±0.0870 best reported | best at pub: Quaternion Graph Neural Networks (2020) best today: The Expressive Power of Graph Neural Networks: A Survey (2023) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 158 | GraphSAGE | 0.9040
±0.0780 | |
| 183 | GAT | 0.9010
±0.0584 | prev best: Quaternion Graph Neural Networks (2020) Improvement within reported uncertainty; not highlighted. |
| 194 | GNNML1 | 0.9000
±0.0042 | This paper |
| 217 | ChebNet | 0.8970
±0.0641 | This paper |
| 403 | MLP | 0.8660
±0.0495 | This paper |
| # | Model | Accuracy ↑ | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | MSH-GNN | 0.9410
±0.0330 | |
| 2 | GRDL | 0.8260
±0.0120 | |
| 3 | GMN | 0.8225 | |
| 32 | GIN | 0.7610
±0.0397 | prev best: Multi-grained Semantics-aware Graph Neural Networks (2020) Improvement within reported uncertainty; not highlighted. |
| 49 | GAT | 0.7590
±0.0426 | prev best: Graph Neural Networks With Convolutional ARMA Filters (2019) Improvement within reported uncertainty; not highlighted. |
| 67 | SAGE | 0.7726
±0.0228 | |
| 73 | PPGN | 0.7720
±0.0453 | This paper |
| 121 | ChebNet | 0.7640
±0.0534 | This paper |
| 120 | GNNML3 | 0.7640
±0.0510 | This paper |
| 149 | MLP | 0.7600
±0.0320 best reported | best today: Simplifying Graph Convolutional Networks with Redundancy-Free Neighbors (2025) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 148 | GCN | 0.7600
±0.0320 best reported | best at pub: Hierarchical Graph Capsule Network (AAAI 2020) best today: Simplifying Graph Convolutional Networks with Redundancy-Free Neighbors (2025) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 166 | GNNML1 | 0.7580
±0.0493 | This paper |
| # | Model | Accuracy ↑ | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GMN | 0.7866 | |
| 2 | MemGNN | 0.7550 | |
| 3 | TFGW SP | 0.7510
±0.0500 | |
| 17 | GatedGCN | 0.7000
±0.0494 | |
| 20 | GAT | 0.5410
±0.0515 | prev best: Graph Neural Networks With Convolutional ARMA Filters (2019) best today: GNNBenchmark (JMLR 2023) Improvement within reported uncertainty; not highlighted. |
| 26 | GraphSAGE | 0.6817
±0.0545 | |
| 32 | GIN | 0.6767
±0.0583 best reported | best at pub: GraphCrop: Subgraph Cropping for Graph Classification (2020) best today: GNNBenchmark (JMLR 2023) |
| 36 | GCN | 0.6650
±0.0691 best reported | best at pub: Hierarchical Graph Capsule Network (AAAI 2020) |
| 59 | ChebNet | 0.6380
±0.0792 | This paper |
| 62 | GNNML3 | 0.6360
±0.0652 | This paper |
| 124 | MLP | 0.5583
±0.0352 best reported | best today: GNNBenchmark (JMLR 2023) |
| 129 | PPGN | 0.5520
±0.0544 | This paper |
| 135 | GNNML1 | 0.5490
±0.0597 | This paper |
