Semi-supervised learning aims to infer class labels using only a small fraction of labeled data. In graph-based semi-supervised learning, this is typically achieved through label propagation to predict labels of unlabeled nodes. However, in real-world applications, data often arrive incrementally in batches. Each time a new batch appears, reapplying the traditional label propagation algorithm to recompute all labels is redundant, computationally intensive, and inefficient. To address the absence of an efficient label propagation update method, we propose DynLP, a novel GPU-centric Dynamic Batched Parallel Label Propagation algorithm that performs only the necessary updates, propagating changes to the relevant subgraph without requiring full recalculation. By exploiting GPU architectural optimizations, our algorithm achieves on average 13x and upto 102x speedup on large-scale datasets compared to state-of-the-art approaches.
Figures & tables
Figure 1. Evolution of the label-propagation algorithm over six iterations.
Figure 2. CUDA Kernel design for sparsification and connected component finding
Figure 3. Block level granularity to process nodes in the frontier list
Figure 4. Memory latency hiding
Method
Incremental
Decremental
Parallelism
Update
Target graph
Memory Optim.
ItLP ( Zhu et al., 2003a )
✓
✗
✗
✗
Dense
Compression
CAGNN ( Zhu et al., 2020 )
✓
✗
✓
✗
Dense
Compression
A2LP ( Zhang et al., 2020 )
✓
✗
✓
✗
Sparse
KNN
StLP ( Wagner et al., 2018 )
✓
✓
✓
✗
Dense
N/A
Approx StLP ( Ponte et al., 2024 )
✓
✓
✓
✗
Dense
Sparse Inverse
DynLP [this work]
✓
✓
✓
✓
Sparse
CSR
Table 1. Baseline methods compared with DynLP .
Dataset
∣V∣
∣E∣
IMDB Review ( Maas et al., 2011 )
50,000
125K
ImageNet ( Deng et al., 2009 )
50,000
125K
Yelp Review ( mhamine, n.d. )
6,990,280
17M
Amazon Household Review ( Hou et al., 2024 )
25,600,000
64M
Amazon Book Review ( Hou et al., 2024 )
29,500,000
73M
Random Dataset
50,000,000
{75M,62M,175M}
Table 2. Dataset description
Figure 5. Iterations and execution time of DynLP across datasets.
Figure 6. Impact of δ on DynLP
Figure 7. Iteration and speedup comparison between DynLP and ItLP as vertex count varies.
Figure 8. Speedup comparison between DynLP and StLP
Figure 9. Performance comparison with machine learning methods
Dataset
ItLP
StLP
DynLP
CAGNN
IMDB
652.25
3,196.41
439.21
8,545.53
Yelp
18,283.94
23,182.12 ( γ=10 )
3,712.82
40,853.31
Household
678,939.29
-
18,232.38
-
Book
783,925.09
-
19,927.31
-
Table 3. Execution time comparison across datasets.
Method
50K
500K
5M
T(ms)
A
T(ms)
A
T(ms)
A
ItLP
1,120
100
4,738
100
11,929
100
StLP
1,637
100
–
–
–
–
StLP ( γ=0.1 )
5,637
72.9
–
–
–
–
StLP ( γ=1.0 )
3,989
83.5
–
–
–
–
StLP ( γ=10.0 )
1,563
56.3
5,989
54.2
21,637
49.5
Table 4. Performance comparison on random graph with varied batch sizes (T: Execution time, A: Accuracy)
Semi-supervised node classification is a foundational task in graph machine learning, yet state-of-the-art Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are hindered by significant computational overhead and reliance on strong homophily assumptions. Traditional GNNs require expensive iterative training and multi-layer message passing, while existing training-free methods, such as Label Propagation, lack adaptability to heterophilo-us graph structures. This paper presents \textbf{F2LP-AP} (Fast and Flexible Label Propagation with Adaptive Propagation Kernel), a training-free, computationally efficient framework that adapts to local graph topology. Our method constructs robust class prototypes via the geometric median and dynamically adjusts propagation parameters based on the Local Clustering Coefficient (LCC), enabling effective modeling of both homophilous and heterophilous graphs without gradient-based training. Extensive experiments across diverse benchmark datasets demonstrate that \textbf{F2LP-AP} achieves competitive or superior accuracy compared to trained GNNs, while significantly outperforming existing baselines in computational efficiency.
Modern machine learning models rely on large amounts of labeled data. However, manual annotation of large-scale datasets is expensive and time-consuming. Label spreading is a semi-supervised learning technique that addresses this challenge by propagating information from a few labeled examples to a larger pool of unlabeled data. Despite its effectiveness, its application to large-scale, high-dimensional datasets is limited by computational costs and memory constraints. To address these limitations, we propose Algebraic Multigrid Acceleration for Efficient Label Spreading (AMELS), an efficient label spreading framework that improves scalability by fast construction of neighborhood graphs and the incorporation of algebraic multigrid solvers. The latter is an iterative solver that replaces the ordinary random walk iteration typically performed in label spreading. Due to the multilevel nature of algebraic multigrid solvers, AMELS spreads given label information across a graph of any size in a single multigrid cycle. We demonstrate that AMELS achieves significant runtime reductions compared to existing implementations while also being more robust to hyperparameter choices in terms of both runtime and classification accuracy. Our framework therefore enables efficient label spreading on large-scale image datasets and produces accurate labels even when only a few labeled samples are available.
Antonia van Betteray, Jonathan Klees, Miriam Schäfers +1
Osnabrück University, Institute for Computer Science, Osnabrück, Germany · Ruhr University Bochum, Institute for Computer Science, Bochum, Germany
Semi-supervised learning (SSL) on data streams is challenging due to the continuous evolution of high-volume data and the scarcity of labels. Existing methods are limited in leveraging the intrinsic relationships among samples because they typically rely on fixed similarity measures or static graph structures, which cannot capture how relationships evolve over time. We propose SLeDGe, an SSL method for data streams that jointly learns a predictive model and an adaptive graph structure under strict memory and label constraints. SLeDGe maintains compact labeled and unlabeled memories using distinct update strategies, balancing rapid adaptation to novel features with the retention of historical consistency. In addition, by encouraging sparsity in the relational graph, SLeDGe filters out spurious connections and enables effective propagation of label supervision. Across 12 datasets, SLeDGe outperforms state-of-the-art competitors, achieving average relative accuracy gains of 31.7% with 0.1% labels and 14.8% with 1% labels.