Scaling Graph Algorithms: From Prototypes to Production

Graph algorithms work great on your laptop. PageRank on a 100,000-node graph finishes in seconds. Louvain finds communities instantly. Then you try it on production data - a graph with 5 billion nodes and 50 billion edges - and suddenly everything takes hours, consumes terabytes of memory, and melts your infrastructure. The jump from prototyping to production in graph algorithms is steep. But it’s a known problem with known solutions. ...

March 9, 2026 · 7 min · James M