52,620 research outputs found
Fast Sorting on a Distributed-Memory Architecture
We consider the often-studied problem of sorting, for a parallel computer. Given an input array distributed evenly over p processors, the task is to compute the sorted output array, also distributed over the p processors. Many existing algorithms take the approach of approximately load-balancing the output, leaving each processor with Θ(n/p) elements. However, in many cases, approximate load-balancing leads to inefficiencies in both the sorting itself and in further uses of the data after sorting. We provide a deterministic parallel sorting algorithm that uses parallel selection to produce any output distribution exactly, particularly one that is perfectly load-balanced. Furthermore, when using a comparison sort, this algorithm is 1-optimal in both computation and communication. We provide an empirical study that illustrates the efficiency of exact data splitting, and shows an improvement over two sample sort algorithms.Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA
A Distributed Frank-Wolfe Algorithm for Communication-Efficient Sparse Learning
Learning sparse combinations is a frequent theme in machine learning. In this
paper, we study its associated optimization problem in the distributed setting
where the elements to be combined are not centrally located but spread over a
network. We address the key challenges of balancing communication costs and
optimization errors. To this end, we propose a distributed Frank-Wolfe (dFW)
algorithm. We obtain theoretical guarantees on the optimization error
and communication cost that do not depend on the total number of
combining elements. We further show that the communication cost of dFW is
optimal by deriving a lower-bound on the communication cost required to
construct an -approximate solution. We validate our theoretical
analysis with empirical studies on synthetic and real-world data, which
demonstrate that dFW outperforms both baselines and competing methods. We also
study the performance of dFW when the conditions of our analysis are relaxed,
and show that dFW is fairly robust.Comment: Extended version of the SIAM Data Mining 2015 pape
Revisiting the Nystrom Method for Improved Large-Scale Machine Learning
We reconsider randomized algorithms for the low-rank approximation of
symmetric positive semi-definite (SPSD) matrices such as Laplacian and kernel
matrices that arise in data analysis and machine learning applications. Our
main results consist of an empirical evaluation of the performance quality and
running time of sampling and projection methods on a diverse suite of SPSD
matrices. Our results highlight complementary aspects of sampling versus
projection methods; they characterize the effects of common data preprocessing
steps on the performance of these algorithms; and they point to important
differences between uniform sampling and nonuniform sampling methods based on
leverage scores. In addition, our empirical results illustrate that existing
theory is so weak that it does not provide even a qualitative guide to
practice. Thus, we complement our empirical results with a suite of worst-case
theoretical bounds for both random sampling and random projection methods.
These bounds are qualitatively superior to existing bounds---e.g. improved
additive-error bounds for spectral and Frobenius norm error and relative-error
bounds for trace norm error---and they point to future directions to make these
algorithms useful in even larger-scale machine learning applications.Comment: 60 pages, 15 color figures; updated proof of Frobenius norm bounds,
added comparison to projection-based low-rank approximations, and an analysis
of the power method applied to SPSD sketche
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