Parallel processing of big graph-shaped data still presents many challenges. Several approaches have appeared recently, and a strong trend focusing on understanding graph computation as iterative vertex-centric computations has emerged. There have been several systems in the vertex-centric approach, for example Pregel, Giraph, GraphLab and PowerGraph. Though programs developed in these systems run efficiently in parallel, writing vertex-programs usually results in code with poor readability, that is full of side effects and control statements unrelated to the algorithm.

In this paper we introduce “s6raph”, a new vertex-centric graph processing framework with a functional interface that allows the user to write clear and concise functions. The user can choose one of several default behaviours provided for most common graph algorithms. We discuss the design of the functional interface and introduce our prototype implementation in Erlang.