On The Multiparty Communication Complexity of Testing Triangle-Freeness

In this paper we initiate the study of property testing in simultaneous and non-simultaneous multi-party communication complexity, focusing on testing triangle-freeness in graphs. We consider the $\textit{coordinator}$ model, where we have $k$ players receiving private inputs, and a coordinator who receives no input; the coordinator can communicate with all the players, but the players cannot communicate with each other. In this model, we ask: if an input graph is divided between the players, with each player receiving some of the edges, how many bits do the players and the coordinator need to exchange to determine if the graph is triangle-free, or $\textit{far}$ from triangle-free? For general communication protocols, we show that $\tilde{O}(k(nd)^{1/4}+k^2)$ bits are sufficient to test triangle-freeness in graphs of size $n$ with average degree $d$ (the degree need not be known in advance). For $\textit{simultaneous}$ protocols, where there is only one communication round, we give a protocol that uses $\tilde{O}(k \sqrt{n})$ bits when $d = O(\sqrt{n})$ and $\tilde{O}(k (nd)^{1/3})$ when $d = \Omega(\sqrt{n})$; here, again, the average degree $d$ does not need to be known in advance. We show that for average degree $d = O(1)$, our simultaneous protocol is asymptotically optimal up to logarithmic factors. For higher degrees, we are not able to give lower bounds on testing triangle-freeness, but we give evidence that the problem is hard by showing that finding an edge that participates in a triangle is hard, even when promised that at least a constant fraction of the edges must be removed in order to make the graph triangle-free.Comment: To Appear in PODC 201

Distributed Testing of Excluded Subgraphs

We study property testing in the context of distributed computing, under the classical CONGEST model. It is known that testing whether a graph is triangle-free can be done in a constant number of rounds, where the constant depends on how far the input graph is from being triangle-free. We show that, for every connected 4-node graph H, testing whether a graph is H-free can be done in a constant number of rounds too. The constant also depends on how far the input graph is from being H-free, and the dependence is identical to the one in the case of testing triangles. Hence, in particular, testing whether a graph is K_4-free, and testing whether a graph is C_4-free can be done in a constant number of rounds (where K_k denotes the k-node clique, and C_k denotes the k-node cycle). On the other hand, we show that testing K_k-freeness and C_k-freeness for k>4 appear to be much harder. Specifically, we investigate two natural types of generic algorithms for testing H-freeness, called DFS tester and BFS tester. The latter captures the previously known algorithm to test the presence of triangles, while the former captures our generic algorithm to test the presence of a 4-node graph pattern H. We prove that both DFS and BFS testers fail to test K_k-freeness and C_k-freeness in a constant number of rounds for k>4

On the Communication Complexity of High-Dimensional Permutations

We study the multiparty communication complexity of high dimensional permutations in the Number On the Forehead (NOF) model. This model is due to Chandra, Furst and Lipton (CFL) who also gave a nontrivial protocol for the Exactly-n problem where three players receive integer inputs and need to decide if their inputs sum to a given integer n. There is a considerable body of literature dealing with the same problem, where (N,+) is replaced by some other abelian group. Our work can be viewed as a far-reaching extension of this line of research. We show that the known lower bounds for that group-theoretic problem apply to all high dimensional permutations. We introduce new proof techniques that reveal new and unexpected connections between NOF communication complexity of permutations and a variety of well-known problems in combinatorics. We also give a direct algorithmic protocol for Exactly-n. In contrast, all previous constructions relied on large sets of integers without a 3-term arithmetic progression

Survey of Distributed Decision

We survey the recent distributed computing literature on checking whether a given distributed system configuration satisfies a given boolean predicate, i.e., whether the configuration is legal or illegal w.r.t. that predicate. We consider classical distributed computing environments, including mostly synchronous fault-free network computing (LOCAL and CONGEST models), but also asynchronous crash-prone shared-memory computing (WAIT-FREE model), and mobile computing (FSYNC model)

Interconnection network with a shared whiteboard: Impact of (a)synchronicity on computing power

In this work we study the computational power of graph-based models of distributed computing in which each node additionally has access to a global whiteboard. A node can read the contents of the whiteboard and, when activated, can write one message of O(log n) bits on it. When the protocol terminates, each node computes the output based on the final contents of the whiteboard. We consider several scheduling schemes for nodes, providing a strict ordering of their power in terms of the problems which can be solved with exactly one activation per node. The problems used to separate the models are related to Maximal Independent Set, detection of cycles of length 4, and BFS spanning tree constructions