Local Exact-Diffusion for Decentralized Optimization and Learning

Distributed optimization methods with local updates have recently attracted a lot of attention due to their potential to reduce the communication cost of distributed methods. In these algorithms, a collection of nodes performs several local updates based on their local data, and then they communicate with each other to exchange estimate information. While there have been many studies on distributed local methods with centralized network connections, there has been less work on decentralized networks. In this work, we propose and investigate a locally updated decentralized method called Local Exact-Diffusion (LED). We establish the convergence of LED in both convex and nonconvex settings for the stochastic online setting. Our convergence rate improves over the rate of existing decentralized methods. When we specialize the network to the centralized case, we recover the state-of-the-art bound for centralized methods. We also link LED to several other independently studied distributed methods, including Scaffnew, FedGate, and VRL-SGD. Additionally, we numerically investigate the benefits of local updates for decentralized networks and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method

Linear Convergence of Primal-Dual Gradient Methods and their Performance in Distributed Optimization

In this work, we revisit a classical incremental implementation of the primal-descent dual-ascent gradient method used for the solution of equality constrained optimization problems. We provide a short proof that establishes the linear (exponential) convergence of the algorithm for smooth strongly-convex cost functions and study its relation to the non-incremental implementation. We also study the effect of the augmented Lagrangian penalty term on the performance of distributed optimization algorithms for the minimization of aggregate cost functions over multi-agent networks

Distributed Coupled Multi-Agent Stochastic Optimization

This work develops effective distributed strategies for the solution of constrained multi-agent stochastic optimization problems with coupled parameters across the agents. In this formulation, each agent is influenced by only a subset of the entries of a global parameter vector or model, and is subject to convex constraints that are only known locally. Problems of this type arise in several applications, most notably in disease propagation models, minimum-cost flow problems, distributed control formulations, and distributed power system monitoring. This work focuses on stochastic settings, where a stochastic risk function is associated with each agent and the objective is to seek the minimizer of the aggregate sum of all risks subject to a set of constraints. Agents are not aware of the statistical distribution of the data and, therefore, can only rely on stochastic approximations in their learning strategies. We derive an effective distributed learning strategy that is able to track drifts in the underlying parameter model. A detailed performance and stability analysis is carried out showing that the resulting coupled diffusion strategy converges at a linear rate to an $O(\mu)-$neighborhood of the true penalized optimizer

On the Performance and Linear Convergence of Decentralized Primal-Dual Methods

This dissertation studies the performance and linear convergence properties of primal-dual methods for the solution of decentralized multi-agent optimization problems. Decentralized multi-agent optimization is a powerful paradigm that finds applications in diverse fields in learning and engineering design. In these setups, a network of agents is connected through some topology and agents are allowed to share information only locally. Their overall goal is to seek the minimizer of a global optimization problem through localized interactions. In decentralized consensus problems, the agents are coupled through a common consensus variable that they need to agree upon. While in decentralized resource allocation problems, the agents are coupled through global affine constraints. Various decentralized consensus optimization algorithms already exist in the literature. Some methods are derived from a primal-dual perspective, while other methods are derived as gradient tracking mechanisms meant to track the average of local gradients. Among the gradient tracking methods are the adapt-then-combine implementations motivated by diffusion strategies, which have been observed to perform better than other implementations. In this dissertation, we develop a novel adapt-then-combine primal-dual algorithmic framework that captures most state-of-the-art gradient based methods as special cases including all the variations of the gradient-tracking methods. We also develop a concise and novel analysis technique that establishes the linear convergence of this general framework under strongly-convex objectives. Due to our unified framework, the analysis reveals important characteristics for these methods such as their convergence rates and step-size stability ranges. Moreover, the analysis reveals how the augmented Lagrangian penalty term, which is utilized in most of these methods, affects the performance of decentralized algorithms. Another important question that we answer is whether decentralized proximal gradient methods can achieve global linear convergence for non-smooth composite optimization. For centralized algorithms, linear convergence has been established in the presence of a non-smooth composite term. In this dissertation, we close the gap between centralized and decentralized proximal gradient algorithms and show that decentralized proximal algorithms can also achieve linear convergence in the presence of a non-smooth term. Furthermore, we show that when each agent possesses a different local non-smooth term then global linear convergence cannot be established in the worst case. Most works that study decentralized optimization problems assume that all agents are involved in computing all variables. However, in many applications the coupling across agents is sparse in the sense that only a few agents are involved in computing certain variables. We show how to design decentralized algorithms in sparsely coupled consensus and resource allocation problems. More importantly, we establish analytically the importance of exploiting the sparsity structure in coupled large-scale networks

Diffusion Stochastic Optimization for Min-Max Problems

The optimistic gradient method is useful in addressing minimax optimization problems. Motivated by the observation that the conventional stochastic version suffers from the need for a large batch size on the order of $\mathcal{O}(\varepsilon^{-2})$ to achieve an $\varepsilon$-stationary solution, we introduce and analyze a new formulation termed Diffusion Stochastic Same-Sample Optimistic Gradient (DSS-OG). We prove its convergence and resolve the large batch issue by establishing a tighter upper bound, under the more general setting of nonconvex Polyak-Lojasiewicz (PL) risk functions. We also extend the applicability of the proposed method to the distributed scenario, where agents communicate with their neighbors via a left-stochastic protocol. To implement DSS-OG, we can query the stochastic gradient oracles in parallel with some extra memory overhead, resulting in a complexity comparable to its conventional counterpart. To demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed algorithm, we conduct tests by training generative adversarial networks

On the Influence of Bias-Correction on Distributed Stochastic Optimization

Various bias-correction methods such as EXTRA, gradient tracking methods, and exact diffusion have been proposed recently to solve distributed {\em deterministic} optimization problems. These methods employ constant step-sizes and converge linearly to the {\em exact} solution under proper conditions. However, their performance under stochastic and adaptive settings is less explored. It is still unknown {\em whether}, {\em when} and {\em why} these bias-correction methods can outperform their traditional counterparts (such as consensus and diffusion) with noisy gradient and constant step-sizes. This work studies the performance of exact diffusion under the stochastic and adaptive setting, and provides conditions under which exact diffusion has superior steady-state mean-square deviation (MSD) performance than traditional algorithms without bias-correction. In particular, it is proven that this superiority is more evident over sparsely-connected network topologies such as lines, cycles, or grids. Conditions are also provided under which exact diffusion method match or may even degrade the performance of traditional methods. Simulations are provided to validate the theoretical findings.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figure, submitted for publicatio

On the Performance and Linear Convergence of Decentralized Primal-Dual Methods

This dissertation studies the performance and linear convergence properties of primal-dual methods for the solution of decentralized multi-agent optimization problems. Decentralized multi-agent optimization is a powerful paradigm that finds applications in diverse fields in learning and engineering design. In these setups, a network of agents is connected through some topology and agents are allowed to share information only locally. Their overall goal is to seek the minimizer of a global optimization problem through localized interactions. In decentralized consensus problems, the agents are coupled through a common consensus variable that they need to agree upon. While in decentralized resource allocation problems, the agents are coupled through global affine constraints. Various decentralized consensus optimization algorithms already exist in the literature. Some methods are derived from a primal-dual perspective, while other methods are derived as gradient tracking mechanisms meant to track the average of local gradients. Among the gradient tracking methods are the adapt-then-combine implementations motivated by diffusion strategies, which have been observed to perform better than other implementations. In this dissertation, we develop a novel adapt-then-combine primal-dual algorithmic framework that captures most state-of-the-art gradient based methods as special cases including all the variations of the gradient-tracking methods. We also develop a concise and novel analysis technique that establishes the linear convergence of this general framework under strongly-convex objectives. Due to our unified framework, the analysis reveals important characteristics for these methods such as their convergence rates and step-size stability ranges. Moreover, the analysis reveals how the augmented Lagrangian penalty term, which is utilized in most of these methods, affects the performance of decentralized algorithms. Another important question that we answer is whether decentralized proximal gradient methods can achieve global linear convergence for non-smooth composite optimization. For centralized algorithms, linear convergence has been established in the presence of a non-smooth composite term. In this dissertation, we close the gap between centralized and decentralized proximal gradient algorithms and show that decentralized proximal algorithms can also achieve linear convergence in the presence of a non-smooth term. Furthermore, we show that when each agent possesses a different local non-smooth term then global linear convergence cannot be established in the worst case. Most works that study decentralized optimization problems assume that all agents are involved in computing all variables. However, in many applications the coupling across agents is sparse in the sense that only a few agents are involved in computing certain variables. We show how to design decentralized algorithms in sparsely coupled consensus and resource allocation problems. More importantly, we establish analytically the importance of exploiting the sparsity structure in coupled large-scale networks