4 research outputs found
Linear-in- Lower Bounds in the LOCAL Model
By prior work, there is a distributed algorithm that finds a maximal
fractional matching (maximal edge packing) in rounds, where
is the maximum degree of the graph. We show that this is optimal:
there is no distributed algorithm that finds a maximal fractional matching in
rounds.
Our work gives the first linear-in- lower bound for a natural graph
problem in the standard model of distributed computing---prior lower bounds for
a wide range of graph problems have been at best logarithmic in .Comment: 1 + 21 pages, 10 figure
On the Complexity of Local Distributed Graph Problems
This paper is centered on the complexity of graph problems in the
well-studied LOCAL model of distributed computing, introduced by Linial [FOCS
'87]. It is widely known that for many of the classic distributed graph
problems (including maximal independent set (MIS) and -vertex
coloring), the randomized complexity is at most polylogarithmic in the size
of the network, while the best deterministic complexity is typically
. Understanding and narrowing down this exponential gap
is considered to be one of the central long-standing open questions in the area
of distributed graph algorithms. We investigate the problem by introducing a
complexity-theoretic framework that allows us to shed some light on the role of
randomness in the LOCAL model. We define the SLOCAL model as a sequential
version of the LOCAL model. Our framework allows us to prove completeness
results with respect to the class of problems which can be solved efficiently
in the SLOCAL model, implying that if any of the complete problems can be
solved deterministically in rounds in the LOCAL model, we can
deterministically solve all efficient SLOCAL-problems (including MIS and
-coloring) in rounds in the LOCAL model. We show
that a rather rudimentary looking graph coloring problem is complete in the
above sense: Color the nodes of a graph with colors red and blue such that each
node of sufficiently large polylogarithmic degree has at least one neighbor of
each color. The problem admits a trivial zero-round randomized solution. The
result can be viewed as showing that the only obstacle to getting efficient
determinstic algorithms in the LOCAL model is an efficient algorithm to
approximately round fractional values into integer values