GraphChi is a disk-based system that efficiently computes on large graphs using a personal computer, enabling advanced data mining and machine learning algorithms on graphs with billions of edges. It employs a parallel sliding window method to break down large graphs into manageable parts, minimizing non-sequential disk accesses. The system demonstrates state-of-the-art performance for graph computations, providing a competitive alternative to traditional distributed systems.

1. Big Graph on small computer
Hadoop meeting
Michael Leznik King.Com
Inspired by Aapo Kryola

2. What is GraphChi
• GraphChi, a disk-based system for computing
efficiently on graphs with billions of edges.
• GraphChi can compute on the full Twitter
follow -graph with just a standard laptop
~ as fast as a very large Hadoop cluster!

3. Why one needs it?
• To use existing graph frameworks, one is faced
with the challenge of partitioning the graph
across cluster nodes. Finding efficient graph cuts
that minimize communication between nodes,
and are also balanced, is a hard problem. More
generally, distributed systems and their users
must deal with managing a cluster, fault
tolerance, and often unpredictable performance.
From the perspective of programmers, debugging
and optimizing distributed algorithms is hard.

4. Would it be possible to do advanced
graph computation on just a personal
computer?

5. Aapo Kyrola PhD
Candidate at Carnegie
Melon University

6. How Does It Work
• By using a well-known method to break
large graphs into small parts, and a novel
parallel sliding windows method,
GraphChi is able to execute several
advanced data mining, graph mining, and
machine learning algorithms on very
large graphs, using just a single
consumer-level computer

7. What Is Parallel Sliding Window?
• Graph 𝐺 = 𝑉, 𝐸 𝑉 − vertex, 𝐸 − edge
• Each edge and vertex are associated with a
user defined type value (Integer, Double e.tc.)
A B
e
E is an out-edge of A and in-edge of B
e = 𝑠𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑐𝑒, 𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 ∈ 𝐸

8. Vertex Centric Computation
• Algorithm: 𝑉𝑒𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑥 𝑢𝑝𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒 − 𝑓𝑢𝑛𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛
Update vertex begin
𝑥 ← read values of in−and−out edges of vertex
vertex. value ← 𝑓 𝑥 ;
foreach edge of vertex do
edge.value ← g(vertex.value, edge.value);
end
end

9. Graphs and Subgraphs
• Under the PSW method, the vertices V of graph
G = (V, E) are split into P disjoint intervals. For
each interval we associate a shard, which stores
all the edges that have destination in the
interval. Edges are stored in the order of their
source. Intervals are chosen to balance the
number of edges in each shard; the number of
intervals, P , is chosen so that any one shard can
be loaded completely into memory.

10. Graphs and Subgraphs
shard(1)
interval(1) interval(2) interval(P)
shard(2) shard(P)

11. Graphs and Subgraphs
Shard 1
Shards small enough to fit in memory; balance size of shards
Shard: in-edges for interval of vertices; sorted by source-id
in-edgesforvertices1..100
sortedbysource_id
Vertices
1..100
Vertices
101..700
Vertices
701..1000
Vertices
1001..10000
Shard 2 Shard 3 Shard 4Shard 1

12. Parallel Sliding Windows
Visualization of the stages of one iteration of the Parallel Sliding Windows method. In
this example, vertices are divided into four intervals, each associated with a shard. The
computation proceeds by constructing a subgraph of vertices one interval a time. In-
edges for the vertices are read from the memory-shard (in dark color) while out-edges
are read from each of the sliding shards. The current sliding window is pictured on top of
each shard.

13. Parallel Sliding Windows
foreach iteration do
shards ← 𝐼𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑧𝑒𝑆ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑠 𝑃
𝐟𝐨𝐫 interval ← 1 𝑡𝑜 𝑃 𝐝𝐨
subgraph ← 𝐿𝑜𝑎𝑑𝑆𝑢𝑏𝐺𝑟𝑎𝑝ℎ 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑎𝑙
𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡 𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑥 ∈ 𝑠𝑢𝑏𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑝ℎ. 𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑥 𝐝𝐨
𝑈𝐷𝐹_𝑢𝑝𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑉𝑒𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑥(𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑥)
end
for 𝑠 ∈ 1, … , 𝑃, 𝑠 ≠ 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑎𝑙 𝐝𝐨
𝑠ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑠 𝑠 . 𝑈𝑝𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑊𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑜𝑤𝑇𝑜𝐷𝑖𝑠𝑘()
end
end
end

14. Parallel Sliding Windows
Input: Interval index number p
Subgraph of vertices in the interval p
𝑎 ← 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑎𝑙 𝑝 . 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑡
𝑏 ← 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑎𝑙 𝑝 . 𝑒𝑛𝑑
𝐺 ← 𝐼𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑧𝑒𝑆𝑢𝑏𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑝ℎ 𝑎, 𝑏

15. Graph Data Format
• Adjacency List Format: (can’t have values)
src1 3 dst1 dst2 dst3
src2 2 dst4 dst 6
• Edge List Format:
src1 dst1 value1
src2 dst2 value2
src3 src3 value3

16. Performance
• Laptop, 16 GB, CPU i7@2.7 x4, SSD 160Gb
• Algorithm: Connected Components
• Graph Size: 7,294,535 vertices (1.4 gb)
• Creating Shards: 61.45 sec
• Analysing graph: 177.24 sec

17. Experiment Setting
• Mac Mini (Apple Inc.)
– 8 GB RAM
– 256 GB SSD, 1TB hard drive
– Intel Core i5, 2.5 GHz
• Experiment graphs:
Graph Vertices Edges P (shards) Preprocessing
live-journal 4.8M 69M 3 0.5 min
netflix 0.5M 99M 20 1 min
twitter-2010 42M 1.5B 20 2 min
uk-2007-05 106M 3.7B 40 31 min
uk-union 133M 5.4B 50 33 min
yahoo-web 1.4B 6.6B 50 37 min

18. Comparison to Existing Systems
Notes: comparison results do not include time to transfer the data to cluster, preprocessing, or the time to
load the graph from disk. GraphChi computes asynchronously, while all but GraphLab synchronously.
PageRank WebGraph Belief Propagation (U Kang et al.)
Matrix Factorization (Alt. Least Sqr.) Triangle Counting
GraphLab
v1 (8 cores)
GraphChi
(Mac Mini)
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Minutes
Netflix (99B edges)
Spark (50
machines)
GraphChi
(Mac Mini)
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
Minutes
Twitter-2010 (1.5B edges)
Pegasus /
Hadoop
(100
machines)
GraphChi
(Mac Mini)
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Minutes
Yahoo-web (6.7B edges)
Hadoop
(1636
machines)
GraphChi
(Mac Mini)
0 100 200 300 400 500
Minutes
twitter-2010 (1.5B edges)

19. PowerGraph Comparison
• PowerGraph / GraphLab 2
outperforms previous systems
by a wide margin on natural
graphs.
• With 64 more machines, 512
more CPUs:
– Pagerank: 40x faster than
GraphChi
– Triangle counting: 30x faster than
GraphChi.
GraphChi has state-of-the-
art performance / CPU.
vs.
GraphChi

20. Conclusion
• Parallel Sliding Windows algorithm enables
processing of large graphs with very few non-
sequential disk accesses.
• For the system researchers, GraphChi is a solid
baseline for system evaluation
– It can solve as big problems as distributed systems.
• Takeaway: Appropriate data structures as an
alternative to scaling up.
Source code and examples: http://graphchi.org
License: Apache 2.0