13 research outputs found
On the Optimal Space Complexity of Consensus for Anonymous Processes
The optimal space complexity of consensus in shared memory is a decades-old
open problem. For a system of processes, no algorithm is known that uses a
sublinear number of registers. However, the best known lower bound due to Fich,
Herlihy, and Shavit requires registers.
The special symmetric case of the problem where processes are anonymous (run
the same algorithm) has also attracted attention. Even in this case, the best
lower and upper bounds are still and . Moreover, Fich,
Herlihy, and Shavit first proved their lower bound for anonymous processes, and
then extended it to the general case. As such, resolving the anonymous case
might be a significant step towards understanding and solving the general
problem.
In this work, we show that in a system of anonymous processes, any consensus
algorithm satisfying nondeterministic solo termination has to use
read-write registers in some execution. This implies an lower bound
on the space complexity of deterministic obstruction-free and randomized
wait-free consensus, matching the upper bound and closing the symmetric case of
the open problem
On the push&pull protocol for rumour spreading
The asynchronous push&pull protocol, a randomized distributed algorithm for
spreading a rumour in a graph , works as follows. Independent Poisson clocks
of rate 1 are associated with the vertices of . Initially, one vertex of
knows the rumour. Whenever the clock of a vertex rings, it calls a random
neighbour : if knows the rumour and does not, then tells the
rumour (a push operation), and if does not know the rumour and knows
it, tells the rumour (a pull operation). The average spread time of
is the expected time it takes for all vertices to know the rumour, and the
guaranteed spread time of is the smallest time such that with
probability at least , after time all vertices know the rumour. The
synchronous variant of this protocol, in which each clock rings precisely at
times , has been studied extensively. We prove the following results
for any -vertex graph: In either version, the average spread time is at most
linear even if only the pull operation is used, and the guaranteed spread time
is within a logarithmic factor of the average spread time, so it is . In the asynchronous version, both the average and guaranteed spread times
are . We give examples of graphs illustrating that these bounds
are best possible up to constant factors. We also prove theoretical
relationships between the guaranteed spread times in the two versions. Firstly,
in all graphs the guaranteed spread time in the asynchronous version is within
an factor of that in the synchronous version, and this is tight.
Next, we find examples of graphs whose asynchronous spread times are
logarithmic, but the synchronous versions are polynomially large. Finally, we
show for any graph that the ratio of the synchronous spread time to the
asynchronous spread time is .Comment: 25 page
Randomized rumor spreading in dynamic graphs
International audienceWe consider the well-studied rumor spreading model in which nodes contact a random neighbor in each round in order to push or pull the rumor. Unlike most previous works which focus on static topologies, we look at a dynamic graph model where an adversary is allowed to rewire the connections between vertices before each round, giving rise to a sequence of graphs, G1, G2, . . . Our first result is a bound on the rumor spreading time in terms of the conductance of those graphs. We show that if the degree of each node does not change much during the protocol (that is, by at most a constant factor), then the spread completes within t rounds for some t such that the sum of conductances of the graphs G1 up to Gt is O(log n). This result holds even against an adaptive adversary whose decisions in a round may depend on the set of informed vertices before the round, and implies the known tight bound with conductance for static graphs. Next we show that for the alternative expansion measure of vertex expansion, the situation is different. An adaptive adversary can delay the spread of rumor significantly even if graphs are regular and have high expansion, unlike in the static graph case where high expansion is known to guarantee fast rumor spreading. However, if the adversary is oblivious, i.e., the graph sequence is decided before the protocol begins, then we show that a bound close to the one for the static case holds for any sequence of regular graphs
How asynchrony affects rumor spreading time
International audienceIn standard randomized (push-pull) rumor spreading, nodes communicate in synchronized rounds. In each round every node contacts a random neighbor in order to exchange the rumor (i.e., either push the rumor to its neighbor or pull it from the neighbor). A natural asynchronous variant of this algorithm is one where each node has an independent Poisson clock with rate 1, and every node contacts a random neighbor whenever its clock ticks. This asynchronous variant is arguably a more realistic model in various settings, including message broadcasting in communication networks, and information dissemination in social networks. In this paper we study how asynchrony affects the rumor spreading time, that is, the time before a rumor originated at a single node spreads to all nodes in the graph. Our first result states that the asynchronous push-pull rumor spreading time is asymptotically bounded by the standard synchronous time. Precisely, we show that for any graph G on n nodes, where the synchronous push-pull protocol informs all nodes within T (G) rounds with high probability, the asynchronous protocol needs at most time O(T (G) + log n) to inform all nodes with high probability. On the other hand, we show that the expected synchronous push-pull rumor spreading time is bounded by O(â n) times the expected asynchronous time. These results improve upon the bounds for both directions shown recently by Acan et al. (PODC 2015). An interesting implication of our first result is that in regular graphs, the weaker push-only variant of synchronous rumor spreading has the same asymptotic performance as the synchronous push-pull algorithm
Random walks on randomly evolving graphs
A random walk is a basic stochastic process on graphs and a key primitive in the design of distributed algorithms. One of the most important features of random walks is that, under mild conditions, they converge to a stationary distribution in time that is at most polynomial in the size of the graph. This fundamental property, however, only holds if the graph does not change over time; on the other hand, many distributed networks are inherently dynamic, and their topology is subjected to potentially drastic changes.
In this work we study the mixing (i.e., convergence) properties of random walks on graphs subjected to random changes over time. Specifically, we consider the edge-Markovian random graph model: for each edge slot, there is a two-state Markov chain with transition probabilities p (add a non-existing edge) and q (remove an existing edge). We derive several positive and negative results that depend on both the density of the graph and the speed by which the graph changes