202,548 research outputs found
Round Compression for Parallel Matching Algorithms
For over a decade now we have been witnessing the success of {\em massive
parallel computation} (MPC) frameworks, such as MapReduce, Hadoop, Dryad, or
Spark. One of the reasons for their success is the fact that these frameworks
are able to accurately capture the nature of large-scale computation. In
particular, compared to the classic distributed algorithms or PRAM models,
these frameworks allow for much more local computation. The fundamental
question that arises in this context is though: can we leverage this additional
power to obtain even faster parallel algorithms?
A prominent example here is the {\em maximum matching} problem---one of the
most classic graph problems. It is well known that in the PRAM model one can
compute a 2-approximate maximum matching in rounds. However, the
exact complexity of this problem in the MPC framework is still far from
understood. Lattanzi et al. showed that if each machine has
memory, this problem can also be solved -approximately in a constant number
of rounds. These techniques, as well as the approaches developed in the follow
up work, seem though to get stuck in a fundamental way at roughly
rounds once we enter the near-linear memory regime. It is thus entirely
possible that in this regime, which captures in particular the case of sparse
graph computations, the best MPC round complexity matches what one can already
get in the PRAM model, without the need to take advantage of the extra local
computation power.
In this paper, we finally refute that perplexing possibility. That is, we
break the above round complexity bound even in the case of {\em
slightly sublinear} memory per machine. In fact, our improvement here is {\em
almost exponential}: we are able to deliver a -approximation to
maximum matching, for any fixed constant , in
rounds
A Polynomial-time Algorithm for Outerplanar Diameter Improvement
The Outerplanar Diameter Improvement problem asks, given a graph and an
integer , whether it is possible to add edges to in a way that the
resulting graph is outerplanar and has diameter at most . We provide a
dynamic programming algorithm that solves this problem in polynomial time.
Outerplanar Diameter Improvement demonstrates several structural analogues to
the celebrated and challenging Planar Diameter Improvement problem, where the
resulting graph should, instead, be planar. The complexity status of this
latter problem is open.Comment: 24 page
Non-Local Probes Do Not Help with Graph Problems
This work bridges the gap between distributed and centralised models of
computing in the context of sublinear-time graph algorithms. A priori, typical
centralised models of computing (e.g., parallel decision trees or centralised
local algorithms) seem to be much more powerful than distributed
message-passing algorithms: centralised algorithms can directly probe any part
of the input, while in distributed algorithms nodes can only communicate with
their immediate neighbours. We show that for a large class of graph problems,
this extra freedom does not help centralised algorithms at all: for example,
efficient stateless deterministic centralised local algorithms can be simulated
with efficient distributed message-passing algorithms. In particular, this
enables us to transfer existing lower bound results from distributed algorithms
to centralised local algorithms
Almost-Smooth Histograms and Sliding-Window Graph Algorithms
We study algorithms for the sliding-window model, an important variant of the
data-stream model, in which the goal is to compute some function of a
fixed-length suffix of the stream. We extend the smooth-histogram framework of
Braverman and Ostrovsky (FOCS 2007) to almost-smooth functions, which includes
all subadditive functions. Specifically, we show that if a subadditive function
can be -approximated in the insertion-only streaming model, then
it can be -approximated also in the sliding-window model with
space complexity larger by factor , where is the
window size.
We demonstrate how our framework yields new approximation algorithms with
relatively little effort for a variety of problems that do not admit the
smooth-histogram technique. For example, in the frequency-vector model, a
symmetric norm is subadditive and thus we obtain a sliding-window
-approximation algorithm for it. Another example is for streaming
matrices, where we derive a new sliding-window
-approximation algorithm for Schatten -norm. We then
consider graph streams and show that many graph problems are subadditive,
including maximum submodular matching, minimum vertex-cover, and maximum
-cover, thereby deriving sliding-window -approximation algorithms for
them almost for free (using known insertion-only algorithms). Finally, we
design for every an artificial function, based on the
maximum-matching size, whose almost-smoothness parameter is exactly
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