How can I efficiently parallelize and optimize a large-scale graph traversal algorithm in Python to handle millions of nodes?

Question

I'm working on Python project that involves processing a very large graph - it has millions of nodes and edges. The goal is to perform a breadth-first search (BFS) or depth-first search (DFS) from a given start node to compute shortest paths or reachability.

Here's the challenge :

• The graph is too large to fit comfortably into memory if stored natively.
• The traversal needs to be fast, ideally leveraging multiple CPU cores.
• I want to avoid race conditions and ensure thread-safe updates to shared data structures.
• The graph data is stored as adjacency lists in files, and I want to process it efficiently without loading the entire graph at once.

Currently, I have a basic BFS implementation using a Python dictionary for adjacency, but it runs slowly and hits memory limits:

from collections import deque

def bfs(graph, start):
    visited = set()
    queue = deque([start])
    while queue:
        node = queue.popleft()
        if node not in visited:
            visited.add(node)
            queue.extend(graph.get(node, []))
    return visited

Question

1. How can I parallelize BFS/DFS in Python to speed up traversal? Should I use multiprocessing, concurrent.features, or another approach?

I'm open to suggestions involving alternative algorithms (like bidirectional BFS), external databases, or memory-mapped files.

I’ve tried the following:

• A basic BFS using Python’s built-in set, deque, and dict, as shown in the code.

• Storing the entire adjacency list in memory using a dictionary of lists, but this doesn’t scale well for millions of nodes.

• I attempted to use the multiprocessing module to run multiple BFS instances in parallel from different starting points, but coordinating shared state and combining results without race conditions became complex.

• Looked into NetworkX, but found it quite slow and memory-heavy for very large graphs.

• I also tried reading adjacency data from a file line-by-line and processing it lazily, but traversal logic became messy and error-prone.

I expected to be able to:

• Traverse the graph quickly (within a few seconds) even with millions of nodes.

• Use multicore processing to speed up traversal.

• Efficiently manage memory without crashing due to RAM limitations.

• Ideally, stream data or keep only parts of the graph in memory at any given time.

• I know Python isn’t the fastest language for this, but I’d like to push it as far as reasonably possible before considering rewriting in C++ or Rust.

Answer 1

You can use combination of "pyspark + graphframes" to achieve this.

Sample Code

from pyspark.sql import SparkSession
from graphframes import GraphFrame

# Create Spark session
spark = SparkSession.builder \
    .appName("BFS") \
    .config("spark.jars.packages", "graphframes:graphframes:0.8.2-spark3.0-s_2.12") \
    .getOrCreate()

# Define vertices and edges as DataFrames
vertices = spark.createDataFrame([
    ("a", "Alice"),
    ("b", "Bob"),
    ("c", "Charlie"),
    ("d", "David"),
    ("e", "Esther")
], ["id", "name"])

edges = spark.createDataFrame([
    ("a", "b"),
    ("b", "c"),
    ("c", "d"),
    ("d", "e")
], ["src", "dst"])

# Create GraphFrame
g = GraphFrame(vertices, edges)

# Run BFS from "a" to "e"
results = g.bfs(fromExpr="id = 'a'", toExpr="id = 'e'")
results.show(truncate=False)