634 research outputs found
Equivalence Classes and Conditional Hardness in Massively Parallel Computations
The Massively Parallel Computation (MPC) model serves as a common abstraction of many modern large-scale data processing frameworks, and has been receiving increasingly more attention over the past few years, especially in the context of classical graph problems. So far, the only way to argue lower bounds for this model is to condition on conjectures about the hardness of some specific problems, such as graph connectivity on promise graphs that are either one cycle or two cycles, usually called the one cycle vs. two cycles problem. This is unlike the traditional arguments based on conjectures about complexity classes (e.g., P ? NP), which are often more robust in the sense that refuting them would lead to groundbreaking algorithms for a whole bunch of problems.
In this paper we present connections between problems and classes of problems that allow the latter type of arguments. These connections concern the class of problems solvable in a sublogarithmic amount of rounds in the MPC model, denoted by MPC(o(log N)), and some standard classes concerning space complexity, namely L and NL, and suggest conjectures that are robust in the sense that refuting them would lead to many surprisingly fast new algorithms in the MPC model. We also obtain new conditional lower bounds, and prove new reductions and equivalences between problems in the MPC model
Massively Parallel Algorithms for Distance Approximation and Spanners
Over the past decade, there has been increasing interest in
distributed/parallel algorithms for processing large-scale graphs. By now, we
have quite fast algorithms -- usually sublogarithmic-time and often
-time, or even faster -- for a number of fundamental graph
problems in the massively parallel computation (MPC) model. This model is a
widely-adopted theoretical abstraction of MapReduce style settings, where a
number of machines communicate in an all-to-all manner to process large-scale
data. Contributing to this line of work on MPC graph algorithms, we present
round MPC algorithms for computing
-spanners in the strongly sublinear regime of local memory. To
the best of our knowledge, these are the first sublogarithmic-time MPC
algorithms for spanner construction. As primary applications of our spanners,
we get two important implications, as follows:
-For the MPC setting, we get an -round algorithm for
approximation of all pairs shortest paths (APSP) in the
near-linear regime of local memory. To the best of our knowledge, this is the
first sublogarithmic-time MPC algorithm for distance approximations.
-Our result above also extends to the Congested Clique model of distributed
computing, with the same round complexity and approximation guarantee. This
gives the first sub-logarithmic algorithm for approximating APSP in weighted
graphs in the Congested Clique model
Improved Deterministic Connectivity in Massively Parallel Computation
A long line of research about connectivity in the Massively Parallel Computation model has culminated in the seminal works of Andoni et al. [FOCS\u2718] and Behnezhad et al. [FOCS\u2719]. They provide a randomized algorithm for low-space MPC with conjectured to be optimal round complexity O(log D + log log_{m/n} n) and O(m) space, for graphs on n vertices with m edges and diameter D. Surprisingly, a recent result of Coy and Czumaj [STOC\u2722] shows how to achieve the same deterministically. Unfortunately, however, their algorithm suffers from large local computation time.
We present a deterministic connectivity algorithm that matches all the parameters of the randomized algorithm and, in addition, significantly reduces the local computation time to nearly linear.
Our derandomization method is based on reducing the amount of randomness needed to allow for a simpler efficient search. While similar randomness reduction approaches have been used before, our result is not only strikingly simpler, but it is the first to have efficient local computation. This is why we believe it to serve as a starting point for the systematic development of computation-efficient derandomization approaches in low-memory MPC
On the Distributed Complexity of Large-Scale Graph Computations
Motivated by the increasing need to understand the distributed algorithmic
foundations of large-scale graph computations, we study some fundamental graph
problems in a message-passing model for distributed computing where
machines jointly perform computations on graphs with nodes (typically, ). The input graph is assumed to be initially randomly partitioned among
the machines, a common implementation in many real-world systems.
Communication is point-to-point, and the goal is to minimize the number of
communication {\em rounds} of the computation.
Our main contribution is the {\em General Lower Bound Theorem}, a theorem
that can be used to show non-trivial lower bounds on the round complexity of
distributed large-scale data computations. The General Lower Bound Theorem is
established via an information-theoretic approach that relates the round
complexity to the minimal amount of information required by machines to solve
the problem. Our approach is generic and this theorem can be used in a
"cookbook" fashion to show distributed lower bounds in the context of several
problems, including non-graph problems. We present two applications by showing
(almost) tight lower bounds for the round complexity of two fundamental graph
problems, namely {\em PageRank computation} and {\em triangle enumeration}. Our
approach, as demonstrated in the case of PageRank, can yield tight lower bounds
for problems (including, and especially, under a stochastic partition of the
input) where communication complexity techniques are not obvious.
Our approach, as demonstrated in the case of triangle enumeration, can yield
stronger round lower bounds as well as message-round tradeoffs compared to
approaches that use communication complexity techniques
On the Computational Complexity of MapReduce
In this paper we study MapReduce computations from a complexity-theoretic
perspective. First, we formulate a uniform version of the MRC model of Karloff
et al. (2010). We then show that the class of regular languages, and moreover
all of sublogarithmic space, lies in constant round MRC. This result also
applies to the MPC model of Andoni et al. (2014). In addition, we prove that,
conditioned on a variant of the Exponential Time Hypothesis, there are strict
hierarchies within MRC so that increasing the number of rounds or the amount of
time per processor increases the power of MRC. To the best of our knowledge we
are the first to approach the MapReduce model with complexity-theoretic
techniques, and our work lays the foundation for further analysis relating
MapReduce to established complexity classes
Parallel Algorithms for Geometric Graph Problems
We give algorithms for geometric graph problems in the modern parallel models
inspired by MapReduce. For example, for the Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) problem
over a set of points in the two-dimensional space, our algorithm computes a
-approximate MST. Our algorithms work in a constant number of
rounds of communication, while using total space and communication proportional
to the size of the data (linear space and near linear time algorithms). In
contrast, for general graphs, achieving the same result for MST (or even
connectivity) remains a challenging open problem, despite drawing significant
attention in recent years.
We develop a general algorithmic framework that, besides MST, also applies to
Earth-Mover Distance (EMD) and the transportation cost problem. Our algorithmic
framework has implications beyond the MapReduce model. For example it yields a
new algorithm for computing EMD cost in the plane in near-linear time,
. We note that while recently Sharathkumar and Agarwal
developed a near-linear time algorithm for -approximating EMD,
our algorithm is fundamentally different, and, for example, also solves the
transportation (cost) problem, raised as an open question in their work.
Furthermore, our algorithm immediately gives a -approximation
algorithm with space in the streaming-with-sorting model with
passes. As such, it is tempting to conjecture that the
parallel models may also constitute a concrete playground in the quest for
efficient algorithms for EMD (and other similar problems) in the vanilla
streaming model, a well-known open problem
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