An end-to-end bi-objective approach to deep graph partitioning.

Journal: Neural networks : the official journal of the International Neural Network Society
PMID:

Abstract

Graphs are ubiquitous in real-world applications, such as computation graphs and social networks. Partitioning large graphs into smaller, balanced partitions is often essential, with the bi-objective graph partitioning problem aiming to minimize both the "cut" across partitions and the imbalance in partition sizes. However, existing heuristic methods face scalability challenges or overlook partition balance, leading to suboptimal results. Recent deep learning approaches, while promising, typically focus only on node-level features and lack a truly end-to-end framework, resulting in limited performance. In this paper, we introduce a novel method based on graph neural networks (GNNs) that leverages multilevel graph features and addresses the problem end-to-end through a bi-objective formulation. Our approach explores node-, local-, and global-level features, and introduces a well-bounded bi-objective function that minimizes the cut while ensuring partition-wise balance across all partitions. Additionally, we propose a GNN-based deep model incorporating a Hardmax operator, allowing the model to optimize partitions in a fully end-to-end manner. Experimental results on 12 datasets across various applications and scales demonstrate that our method significantly improves both partitioning quality and scalability compared to existing bi-objective and deep graph partitioning baselines.

Authors

  • Pengcheng Wei
    Information Systems Technology and Design Pillar, Singapore University of Technology and Design, 485998, Singapore. Electronic address: pengcheng_wei@mymail.sutd.edu.sg.
  • Yuan Fang
    Department of Neurology, Dongyang People's Hospital, Affiliated to Wenzhou Medical University, Dongyang, China.
  • Zhihao Wen
    School of Computing and Information Systems, Singapore Management University, 178902, Singapore. Electronic address: zhwen.2019@smu.edu.sg.
  • Zheng Xiao
    Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China.
  • Binbin Chen
    Department of Pharmacy, Xiamen Xianyue Hospital, Xiamen, Fujian, 361012, China.