Benchmarking GPU and TPU Performance with Graph Neural Networks

Many artificial intelligence (AI) devices have been developed to accelerate the training and inference of neural networks models. The most common ones are the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) and Tensor Processing Unit (TPU). They are highly optimized for dense data representations. However, sparse representations such as graphs are prevalent in many domains, including science. It is therefore important to characterize the performance of available AI accelerators on sparse data. This work analyzes and compares the GPU and TPU performance training a Graph Neural Network (GNN) developed to solve a real-life pattern recognition problem. Characterizing the new class of models acting on sparse data may prove helpful in optimizing the design of deep learning libraries and future AI accelerators.