GNNMerge: Merging of GNN Models Without Accessing Training Data

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Garg, Vipul, Thakre, Ishita, Ranu, Sayan
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Garg, Vipul
Thakre, Ishita
Ranu, Sayan
author_facet Garg, Vipul
Thakre, Ishita
Ranu, Sayan
contents Model merging has gained prominence in machine learning as a method to integrate multiple trained models into a single model without accessing the original training data. While existing approaches have demonstrated success in domains such as computer vision and NLP, their application to Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) remains unexplored. These methods often rely on the assumption of shared initialization, which is seldom applicable to GNNs. In this work, we undertake the first benchmarking study of model merging algorithms for GNNs, revealing their limited effectiveness in this context. To address these challenges, we propose GNNMerge, which utilizes a task-agnostic node embedding alignment strategy to merge GNNs. Furthermore, we establish that under a mild relaxation, the proposed optimization objective admits direct analytical solutions for widely used GNN architectures, significantly enhancing its computational efficiency. Empirical evaluations across diverse datasets, tasks, and architectures establish GNNMerge to be up to 24% more accurate than existing methods while delivering over 2 orders of magnitude speed-up compared to training from scratch.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_03384
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle GNNMerge: Merging of GNN Models Without Accessing Training Data
Garg, Vipul
Thakre, Ishita
Ranu, Sayan
Machine Learning
Model merging has gained prominence in machine learning as a method to integrate multiple trained models into a single model without accessing the original training data. While existing approaches have demonstrated success in domains such as computer vision and NLP, their application to Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) remains unexplored. These methods often rely on the assumption of shared initialization, which is seldom applicable to GNNs. In this work, we undertake the first benchmarking study of model merging algorithms for GNNs, revealing their limited effectiveness in this context. To address these challenges, we propose GNNMerge, which utilizes a task-agnostic node embedding alignment strategy to merge GNNs. Furthermore, we establish that under a mild relaxation, the proposed optimization objective admits direct analytical solutions for widely used GNN architectures, significantly enhancing its computational efficiency. Empirical evaluations across diverse datasets, tasks, and architectures establish GNNMerge to be up to 24% more accurate than existing methods while delivering over 2 orders of magnitude speed-up compared to training from scratch.
title GNNMerge: Merging of GNN Models Without Accessing Training Data
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.03384