A Massively Parallel Dynamic Programming for Approximate Rectangle Escape Problem

Sublinear time complexity is required by the massively parallel computation (MPC) model. Breaking dynamic programs into a set of sparse dynamic programs that can be divided, solved, and merged in sublinear time. The rectangle escape problem (REP) is defined as follows: For $n$ axis-aligned rectangles inside an axis-aligned bounding box $B$, extend each rectangle in only one of the four directions: up, down, left, or right until it reaches $B$ and the density $k$ is minimized, where $k$ is the maximum number of extensions of rectangles to the boundary that pass through a point inside bounding box $B$. REP is NP-hard for $k>1$. If the rectangles are points of a grid (or unit squares of a grid), the problem is called the square escape problem (SEP) and it is still NP-hard. We give a $2$-approximation algorithm for SEP with $k\geq2$ with time complexity $O(n^{3/2}k^2)$. This improves the time complexity of existing algorithms which are at least quadratic. Also, the approximation ratio of our algorithm for $k\geq 3$ is $3/2$ which is tight. We also give a $8$-approximation algorithm for REP with time complexity $O(n\log n+nk)$ and give a MPC version of this algorithm for $k=O(1)$ which is the first parallel algorithm for this problem

An Algorithm for the Maximum Weight Independent Set Problem on Outerstring Graphs

Outerstring graphs are the intersection graphs of curves that lie inside a disk such that each curve intersects the boundary of the disk. Outerstring graphs are among the most general classes of intersection graphs studied. To date, no polynomial time algorithm is known for any of the classical graph optimization problems on outerstring graphs; in fact, most are NP-hard. It is known that there is an intersection model for any outerstring graph that consists of polygonal arcs attached to a circle. However, this representation may require an exponential number of segments relative to the size of the graph. Given an outerstring graph and an intersection model consisting of polygonal arcs with a total of N segments, we develop an algorithm that solves the Maximum Weight Independent Set problem in O(N³) time. If the polygonal arcs are restricted to single segments, then outersegment graphs result. For outersegment graphs, we solve the Maximum Weight Independent Set problem in O(n³) time where n is the number of vertices in the graph