The invention relates to sampling training data for training a graph neural network for
electronic design automation. A
graph database stores (1) a plurality of graphs each representing a finished
electronic design, with each graph containing components nodes with component features, and edges, wherein each component node represents a physical component. A graph clustering module assigns (3) a cluster from a set of clusters to each component node, wherein each cluster represents component nodes with common characteristics in topology and / or common component features. A cluster-based link sampling module samples (4) an edge from a
sample space, wherein the
sample space consists of all edges connecting clusters of component nodes in a selected graph currently selected among the graphs, and wherein a component node connected to the sampled edge is taken as a source component node, and wherein a subgraph is taken from the selected
graph based on a
receptive field around the source component node. Finally, a cluster-based
receptive field sampling module picks (5) a cluster of component nodes that is connected to the source component node within the subgraph, reduces (6) the subgraph by dropping the picked cluster of component nodes, creates a corresponding reduced subgraph, and adds (7) the reduced subgraph along with the source component node and a target to a
training set, wherein the target is a
label of the picked cluster. These operations can be repeated iteratively (8), until every cluster has been picked, and / or recursively (9) within the reduced subgraphs, until only one cluster remains. Further embodiments provide a novel end-to-end training procedure for GNN-based recommender systems based on the efficient link sampling, which results in faster convergence during training, thus saving both compute resource costs and expert's time while waiting for new models. As a consequence, this enables the possibility to explore a wider range of models (e.g., a larger
hyperparameter range) within given constraints.