# Distributed Training of Large Graph Neural Networks with Variable Communication Rates

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.17611 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.17611/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 42 of its 76 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Jun 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 42)

- [Inductive Representation Learning on Large Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02216/) (2017)
- [How Powerful are Graph Neural Networks?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.00826/) (2018)
- [Distributed Representations of Words and Phrases and their Compositionality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1310.4546/) (2013)
- [A Comprehensive Survey on Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.00596/) (2019)
- [Graph Neural Networks: A Review of Methods and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.08434/) (2018)
- [Federated Learning: Challenges, Methods, and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.07873/) (2019)
- [Geometric deep learning: going beyond Euclidean data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.08097/) (2016)
- [E(n) Equivariant Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09844/) (2021)
- [Towards Federated Learning at Scale: System Design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.01046/) (2019)
- [FedPAQ: A Communication-Efficient Federated Learning Method with Periodic Averaging and Quantization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.13014/) (2019)
- [Improving Graph Neural Network Expressivity via Subgraph Isomorphism Counting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09252/) (2020)
- [GraphCast: Learning skillful medium-range global weather forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.12794/) (2022)
- [Decentralized Stochastic Optimization and Gossip Algorithms with Compressed Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.00340/) (2019)
- [Universal Invariant and Equivariant Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.04943/) (2019)
- [On the equivalence between graph isomorphism testing and function approximation with GNNs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.12560/) (2019)
- [DistDGL: Distributed Graph Neural Network Training for Billion-Scale Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.05337/) (2020)
- [Stability Properties of Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.04497/) (2019)
- [Graphon Neural Networks and the Transferability of Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.03548/) (2020)
- [Degree-Quant: Quantization-Aware Training for Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.05000/) (2020)
- [Convolutional Neural Network Architectures for Signals Supported on Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.00165/) (2018)
- [Decoupling the Depth and Scope of Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.07858/) (2022)
- [Error Compensated Quantized SGD and its Applications to Large-scale Distributed Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.08054/) (2018)
- [DistGNN: Scalable Distributed Training for Large-Scale Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.06700/) (2021)
- [Generalization Analysis of Message Passing Neural Networks on Large Random Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.00645/) (2022)
- [Transferability of Graph Neural Networks: an Extended Graphon Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.10096/) (2021)
- [A Linearly Convergent Algorithm for Decentralized Optimization: Sending Less Bits for Free!](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.01697/) (2020)
- [VQ-GNN: A Universal Framework to Scale up Graph Neural Networks using Vector Quantization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.14363/) (2021)
- [Binary Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15823/) (2020)
- [SGQuant: Squeezing the Last Bit on Graph Neural Networks with Specialized Quantization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.05100/) (2020)
- [Learning by Transference: Training Graph Neural Networks on Growing Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.03693/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Training Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) on large graphs presents unique challenges due to the large memory and computing requirements. Distributed GNN training, where the graph is partitioned across multiple machines, is a common approach to training GNNs on large graphs. However, as the graph cannot generally be decomposed into small non-interacting components, data communication between the training machines quickly limits training speeds. Compressing the communicated node activations by a fixed amount improves the training speeds, but lowers the accuracy of the trained GNN. In this paper, we introduce a variable compression scheme for reducing the communication volume in distributed GNN training without compromising the accuracy of the learned model. Based on our theoretical analysis, we derive a variable compression method that converges to a solution equivalent to the full communication case, for all graph partitioning schemes. Our empirical results show that our method attains a comparable performance to the one obtained with full communication. We outperform full communication at any fixed compression ratio for any communication budget.