Horizon: a multi-abstraction framework for graph analytics

Abstract

A graph application written using a distributed graph processing framework can perform over an order of magnitude slower than its high-performance, native counterpart. This issue stems from the aim, common to most graph frameworks, of restricting the scope of application development to specific graph constructs, such as, for example, vertex or edge programs. In this paper we present Horizon, a distributed graph processing framework achieving close to native performance without penalizing productivity by providing a multi-layer, multi-abstraction model of computation. Compared to current frameworks, Horizon extends the scope of computation by exposing two notions usually relegated to implementations: graph data models and communication models. Horizon can reduce execution time by an average of 5.3× across different applications and datasets and process an order of magnitude larger graphs when compared to the state of the art.