HiPerMotif: Novel Parallel Subgraph Isomorphism in Large-Scale Property Graphs

Abstract

Subgraph isomorphism, essential for pattern detection in large-scale graphs, faces scalability challenges in attribute-rich property graphs used in neuroscience, systems biology, and social network analysis. Traditional algorithms explore search spaces vertex-by-vertex from empty mappings, leading to extensive early-stage exploration with limited pruning opportunities. We introduce HiPerMotif, a novel hybrid parallel algorithm that fundamentally shifts the search initialization strategy. After structurally reordering the pattern graph to prioritize high-degree vertices, HiPerMotif systematically identifies all possible mappings for the first edge (vertices 0,1) in the target graph, validates these edge candidates using efficient vertex and edge validators, and injects the validated partial mappings as states at depth 2. The algorithm then continues with traditional vertex-by-vertex exploration from these pre-validated starting points, effectively pruning the expensive early search tree branches while enabling natural parallelization over edge candidates. Our contributions include the edge-centric initialization paradigm with state injection, a structural reordering strategy achieving up to 5x speedup, rapid edge and vertex validators for attribute-rich graphs, and efficient parallel enumeration over target graph edges. Implemented in the open-source Arachne framework, HiPerMotif achieves up to 66x speedup over state-of-the-art baselines (VF2-PS, VF3P, Glasgow) on diverse datasets where baselines successfully complete execution. Additionally, HiPerMotif successfully processes massive datasets such as the H01 connectome with 147 million edges, which existing methods cannot handle due to memory constraints. Comprehensive evaluation across synthetic and real-world graphs demonstrates HiPerMotif's scalability, enabling advanced analysis in computational neuroscience and beyond.