Flat Holonomies on Automata Networks

We consider asynchronous networks of identical finite (independent of network's size or topology) automata. Our automata drive any network from any initial configuration of states, to a coherent one in which it can carry efficiently any computations implementable on synchronous properly initialized networks of the same size. A useful data structure on such networks is a partial orientation of its edges. It needs to be flat, i.e. have null holonomy (no excess of up or down edges in any cycle). It also needs to be centered, i.e. have a unique node with no down edges. There are (interdependent) self-stabilizing asynchronous finite automata protocols assuring flat centered orientation. Such protocols may vary in assorted efficiency parameters and it is desirable to have each replaceable with any alternative, responsible for a simple limited task. We describe an efficient reduction of any computational task to any such set of protocols compliant with our interface conditions.Comment: 20 pages, significant revisio

Random Binary Trees for Approximate Nearest Neighbour Search in Binary Space

Approximate nearest neighbour (ANN) search is one of the most important problems in computer science fields such as data mining or computer vision. In this paper, we focus on ANN for high-dimensional binary vectors and we propose a simple yet powerful search method that uses Random Binary Search Trees (RBST). We apply our method to a dataset of 1.25M binary local feature descriptors obtained from a real-life image-based localisation system provided by Google as a part of Project Tango. An extensive evaluation of our method against the state-of-the-art variations of Locality Sensitive Hashing (LSH), namely Uniform LSH and Multi-probe LSH, shows the superiority of our method in terms of retrieval precision with performance boost of over 20%Comment: The final publication is available at Springer via https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69900-4_6

Towards balanced clustering - part 1 (preliminaries)

The article contains a preliminary glance at balanced clustering problems. Basic balanced structures and combinatorial balanced problems are briefly described. A special attention is targeted to various balance/unbalance indices (including some new versions of the indices): by cluster cardinality, by cluster weights, by inter-cluster edge/arc weights, by cluster element structure (for element multi-type clustering). Further, versions of optimization clustering problems are suggested (including multicriteria problem formulations). Illustrative numerical examples describe calculation of balance indices and element multi-type balance clustering problems (including example for design of student teams).Comment: 21 pages, 17 figures, 14 table

The Pyramid Scheme: Oblivious RAM for Trusted Processors

Modern processors, e.g., Intel SGX, allow applications to isolate secret code and data in encrypted memory regions called enclaves. While encryption effectively hides the contents of memory, the sequence of address references issued by the secret code leaks information. This is a serious problem because these leaks can easily break the confidentiality guarantees of enclaves. In this paper, we explore Oblivious RAM (ORAM) designs that prevent these information leaks under the constraints of modern SGX processors. Most ORAMs are a poor fit for these processors because they have high constant overhead factors or require large private memories, which are not available in these processors. We address these limitations with a new hierarchical ORAM construction, the Pyramid ORAM, that is optimized towards online bandwidth cost and small blocks. It uses a new hashing scheme that circumvents the complexity of previous hierarchical schemes. We present an efficient x64-optimized implementation of Pyramid ORAM that uses only the processor's registers as private memory. We compare Pyramid ORAM with Circuit ORAM, a state-of-the-art tree-based ORAM scheme that also uses constant private memory. Pyramid ORAM has better online asymptotical complexity than Circuit ORAM. Our implementation of Pyramid ORAM and Circuit ORAM validates this: as all hierarchical schemes, Pyramid ORAM has high variance of access latencies; although latency can be high for some accesses, for typical configurations Pyramid ORAM provides access latencies that are 8X better than Circuit ORAM for 99% of accesses. Although the best known hierarchical ORAM has better asymptotical complexity, Pyramid ORAM has significantly lower constant overhead factors, making it the preferred choice in practice

Learning Decision Trees Recurrently Through Communication

Integrated interpretability without sacrificing the prediction accuracy of decision making algorithms has the potential of greatly improving their value to the user. Instead of assigning a label to an image directly, we propose to learn iterative binary sub-decisions, inducing sparsity and transparency in the decision making process. The key aspect of our model is its ability to build a decision tree whose structure is encoded into the memory representation of a Recurrent Neural Network jointly learned by two models communicating through message passing. In addition, our model assigns a semantic meaning to each decision in the form of binary attributes, providing concise, semantic and relevant rationalizations to the user. On three benchmark image classification datasets, including the large-scale ImageNet, our model generates human interpretable binary decision sequences explaining the predictions of the network while maintaining state-of-the-art accuracy.Comment: Accepted in IEEE CVPR 202

Exploring Connections Between Active Learning and Model Extraction

Machine learning is being increasingly used by individuals, research institutions, and corporations. This has resulted in the surge of Machine Learning-as-a-Service (MLaaS) - cloud services that provide (a) tools and resources to learn the model, and (b) a user-friendly query interface to access the model. However, such MLaaS systems raise privacy concerns such as model extraction. In model extraction attacks, adversaries maliciously exploit the query interface to steal the model. More precisely, in a model extraction attack, a good approximation of a sensitive or proprietary model held by the server is extracted (i.e. learned) by a dishonest user who interacts with the server only via the query interface. This attack was introduced by Tramer et al. at the 2016 USENIX Security Symposium, where practical attacks for various models were shown. We believe that better understanding the efficacy of model extraction attacks is paramount to designing secure MLaaS systems. To that end, we take the first step by (a) formalizing model extraction and discussing possible defense strategies, and (b) drawing parallels between model extraction and established area of active learning. In particular, we show that recent advancements in the active learning domain can be used to implement powerful model extraction attacks, and investigate possible defense strategies

Instance and Output Optimal Parallel Algorithms for Acyclic Joins

Massively parallel join algorithms have received much attention in recent years, while most prior work has focused on worst-optimal algorithms. However, the worst-case optimality of these join algorithms relies on hard instances having very large output sizes, which rarely appear in practice. A stronger notion of optimality is {\em output-optimal}, which requires an algorithm to be optimal within the class of all instances sharing the same input and output size. An even stronger optimality is {\em instance-optimal}, i.e., the algorithm is optimal on every single instance, but this may not always be achievable. In the traditional RAM model of computation, the classical Yannakakis algorithm is instance-optimal on any acyclic join. But in the massively parallel computation (MPC) model, the situation becomes much more complicated. We first show that for the class of r-hierarchical joins, instance-optimality can still be achieved in the MPC model. Then, we give a new MPC algorithm for an arbitrary acyclic join with load O ({\IN \over p} + {\sqrt{\IN \cdot \OUT} \over p}), where \IN,\OUT are the input and output sizes of the join, and $p$ is the number of servers in the MPC model. This improves the MPC version of the Yannakakis algorithm by an O (\sqrt{\OUT \over \IN} ) factor. Furthermore, we show that this is output-optimal when \OUT = O(p \cdot \IN), for every acyclic but non-r-hierarchical join. Finally, we give the first output-sensitive lower bound for the triangle join in the MPC model, showing that it is inherently more difficult than acyclic joins

A Survey and Evaluation of Data Center Network Topologies

Data centers are becoming increasingly popular for their flexibility and processing capabilities in the modern computing environment. They are managed by a single entity (administrator) and allow dynamic resource provisioning, performance optimization as well as efficient utilization of available resources. Each data center consists of massive compute, network and storage resources connected with physical wires. The large scale nature of data centers requires careful planning of compute, storage, network nodes, interconnection as well as inter-communication for their effective and efficient operations. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey and taxonomy of network topologies either used in commercial data centers, or proposed by researchers working in this space. We also compare and evaluate some of those topologies using mininet as well as gem5 simulator for different traffic patterns, based on various metrics including throughput, latency and bisection bandwidth

Energy-aware Allocation of Graph Jobs in Vehicular Cloud Computing-enabled Software-defined IoV

Software-defined internet of vehicles (SDIoV) has emerged as a promising paradigm to realize flexible and comprehensive resource management, for next generation automobile transportation systems. In this paper, a vehicular cloud computing-based SDIoV framework is studied wherein the joint allocation of transmission power and graph job is formulated as a nonlinear integer programming problem. To effectively address the problem, a structure-preservation-based two-stage allocation scheme is proposed that decouples template searching from power allocation. Specifically, a hierarchical tree-based random subgraph isomorphism mechanism is applied in the first stage by identifying potential mappings (templates) between the components of graph jobs and service providers. A structure-preserving simulated annealing-based power allocation algorithm is adopted in the second stage to achieve the trade-off between the job completion time and energy consumption. Extensive simulations are conducted to verify the performance of the proposed algorithms.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, INFOCOM WORKSHOP 202