US Patent 11841799 Graph neural network accelerator with attribute caching

This application describes a hardware accelerator, a computer system, and a method for accelerating Graph Neural Network (GNN) node attribute fetching. The hardware accelerator comprises a GNN attribute processor; and a first memory, wherein the GNN attribute processor is configured to: receive a graph node identifier; determine a target memory address within the first memory based on the graph node identifier; determine, based on the received graph node identifier, whether attribute data corresponding to the received graph node identifier is cached in the first memory at the target memory address; and in response to determining that the attribute data is not cached in the first memory: fetch the attribute data from a second memory, and write the fetched attribute data into the first memory at the target memory address.