Batch Before You Lift: Scalable Topological Deep Learning on Large Graphs
Organizations: IMOS Lab, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland · University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia · UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, USA · Capital One
Abstract
Topological Deep Learning extends graph-based learning to higher-order domains, such as hypergraphs, cellular, and simplicial complexes. These domains are typically constructed from patterns in an input graph through a process of graph lifting. Full-domain training constructs and stores the complete lifted representation before model execution. On large and dense datasets like Reddit (233k nodes and 57.3M edges), this global materialization becomes a severe computational bottleneck, often rendering training infeasible. To address this limitation, we introduce Cluster-TNN, a domain-agnostic framework that avoids this bottleneck by lifting locally instead. After partitioning the input graph during preprocessing, at runtime Cluster-TNN dynamically samples groups of node clusters, reconstructs their induced subgraphs to form mini-batches, and applies the chosen lifting within each mini-batch. Retaining all edges among sampled nodes preserves the connectivity needed to construct higher-order structures across clusters, producing topological mini-batches that existing Topological Neural Networks can process directly. Across 21 matched comparisons with full-graph execution, Cluster-TNN reduces peak GPU memory in every configuration, by 83.2% on average while maintaining competitive predictive performance. Notably, such a reduction enables, to our knowledge, the first training of multiple different higher-order Topological Neural Networks on large datasets such as Reddit and OGBN Products. These results establish Cluster-TNN as a general strategy for scaling Topological Deep Learning beyond the limitations of global domain construction.
Figures & tables
| Cora Full | Amazon Ratings | Questions | Coauthor Physics | OGBN Products | |||||
| Model | Full-graph | Cluster-TNN | Full-graph | Cluster-TNN | Full-graph | Cluster-TNN | Cluster-TNN | Cluster-TNN | Cluster-TNN |
| GCN | |||||||||
| EDHNN | |||||||||
| UniGNN | |||||||||
| CWN | |||||||||
| TopoTune | |||||||||
| Cora Full | Amazon Ratings | Questions | ||||||||||
| Model | Partitioner | Edges | Ensemble | Full-graph | Partitioner | Edges | Ensemble | Full-graph | Partitioner | Edges | Ensemble | Full-graph |
| GCN | ||||||||||||
| EDHNN | ||||||||||||
| UniGNN | ||||||||||||
| CWN | ||||||||||||
| TopoTune | ||||||||||||
Appendix figures & tables17 assets
Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.
Appendix
| Dataset | Input graph | Cellular 2-cells | Simplicial 2-cells | ||||
| Nodes | Edges | Mean node degree | Count | Per node | Count | Per node | |
| Questions | |||||||
| Amazon Ratings | |||||||
| Cora Full | |||||||
| Coauthor Physics | |||||||
| Dataset | Input width | hypergraph | Cycle cell complex | Clique simplicial complex |
| Questions | GB | GB | GB | |
| Amazon Ratings | GB | GB | GB | |
| Cora Full | GB | GB | GB | |
| Coauthor Physics | GB | GB | GB | |
| GB | GB | TB | ||
| OGBN Products | GB | GB | GB |
| Dataset | Lifting | Model | Additional operators | Preprocessing time (s) | Peak CPU memory (GB) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon Ratings | neighbourhood hypergraph | EDHNN | None beyond the node-hyperedge incidence | ||
| Amazon Ratings | neighbourhood hypergraph | UniGNN | None beyond the node-hyperedge incidence | ||
| Amazon Ratings | Cycle-basis cell | CWN | Rank-1 upper adjacency | ||
| Amazon Ratings | Cycle-basis cell | TopoTune | Rank-1 and two-hop rank-0 upper adjacencies | ||
| Amazon Ratings | Dimension-2 clique complex | SCN | None beyond the rank-1 and rank-2 incidences | ||
| Amazon Ratings | Dimension-2 clique complex | SCCNN | None beyond the rank-1 and rank-2 incidences |
| Dataset | Model | Setting | Preprocessing | Train | Final evaluation | Total | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GCN | Full-graph | - | - | |||||
| Cluster-TNN | ||||||||
| EDHNN | Full-graph | - | - | |||||
| Cluster-TNN | ||||||||
| UniGNN | Full-graph | - | - | |||||
| Cluster-TNN |
| Subset | Count | Full-graph sum (s) | Cluster-TNN sum (s) | Pooled change |
| Shorter partitioned runtime | 11 | |||
| Longer partitioned runtime | 10 | |||
| All matched configurations | 21 |
| Full-graph | Cluster-TNN | ||||||
| Dataset | Model | Peak CPU memory (GB) | Peak GPU memory (GB) | Peak CPU memory (GB) | Peak GPU memory (GB) | ||
| GCN | |||||||
| EDHNN | |||||||
| UniGNN | |||||||
| Cora Full | CWN | ||||||
| TopoTune | |||||||
| Dataset | Model | Peak CPU memory (GB) | Peak GPU memory (GB) | ||
| GCN | |||||
| EDHNN | |||||
| UniGNN | |||||
| Coauthor Physics | CWN | ||||
| TopoTune | |||||
| SCN |
| Full-graph | Cluster-TNN | ||||||||||
| Dataset | Model | Val. | Test | Val. | Test | ||||||
| Cora Full | GCN | 32 | 8 | ||||||||
| EDHNN | |||||||||||
| UniGNN | |||||||||||
| CWN | |||||||||||
| TopoTune | |||||||||||
| Dataset | Model | Val. | Test | ||||
| GCN | |||||||
| EDHNN | |||||||
| UniGNN | |||||||
| Coauthor Physics | CWN | ||||||
| TopoTune | |||||||
| SCN |
| Dataset | Metric | Input feature dimension | Classes |
| Cora Full | Accuracy | ||
| Amazon Ratings | Accuracy | ||
| Questions | AUROC | ||
| Coauthor Physics | Accuracy | ||
| Accuracy | |||
| OGBN Products | Accuracy |
| Dataset | Candidate values | Candidate values |
| Questions | ||
| Amazon Ratings | ||
| Cora Full | ||
| Coauthor Physics | ||
| OGBN Products |
| Dataset | Protocol | Learning Rate | Weight Decay | Hidden Channels | Projection Dropout | Dropout | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GCN | ||||||||
| Questions | Full-graph | |||||||
| Cluster-TNN | ||||||||
| Amazon Ratings | Full-graph | |||||||
| Cluster-TNN | ||||||||
| Cora Full | Full-graph | |||||||