3,013 research outputs found
Choosing Colors for Geometric Graphs via Color Space Embeddings
Graph drawing research traditionally focuses on producing geometric
embeddings of graphs satisfying various aesthetic constraints. After the
geometric embedding is specified, there is an additional step that is often
overlooked or ignored: assigning display colors to the graph's vertices. We
study the additional aesthetic criterion of assigning distinct colors to
vertices of a geometric graph so that the colors assigned to adjacent vertices
are as different from one another as possible. We formulate this as a problem
involving perceptual metrics in color space and we develop algorithms for
solving this problem by embedding the graph in color space. We also present an
application of this work to a distributed load-balancing visualization problem.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures. To appear at 14th Int. Symp. Graph Drawing, 200
Solving constraint-satisfaction problems with distributed neocortical-like neuronal networks
Finding actions that satisfy the constraints imposed by both external inputs
and internal representations is central to decision making. We demonstrate that
some important classes of constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) can be solved
by networks composed of homogeneous cooperative-competitive modules that have
connectivity similar to motifs observed in the superficial layers of neocortex.
The winner-take-all modules are sparsely coupled by programming neurons that
embed the constraints onto the otherwise homogeneous modular computational
substrate. We show rules that embed any instance of the CSPs planar four-color
graph coloring, maximum independent set, and Sudoku on this substrate, and
provide mathematical proofs that guarantee these graph coloring problems will
convergence to a solution. The network is composed of non-saturating linear
threshold neurons. Their lack of right saturation allows the overall network to
explore the problem space driven through the unstable dynamics generated by
recurrent excitation. The direction of exploration is steered by the constraint
neurons. While many problems can be solved using only linear inhibitory
constraints, network performance on hard problems benefits significantly when
these negative constraints are implemented by non-linear multiplicative
inhibition. Overall, our results demonstrate the importance of instability
rather than stability in network computation, and also offer insight into the
computational role of dual inhibitory mechanisms in neural circuits.Comment: Accepted manuscript, in press, Neural Computation (2018
Scaling Monte Carlo Tree Search on Intel Xeon Phi
Many algorithms have been parallelized successfully on the Intel Xeon Phi
coprocessor, especially those with regular, balanced, and predictable data
access patterns and instruction flows. Irregular and unbalanced algorithms are
harder to parallelize efficiently. They are, for instance, present in
artificial intelligence search algorithms such as Monte Carlo Tree Search
(MCTS). In this paper we study the scaling behavior of MCTS, on a highly
optimized real-world application, on real hardware. The Intel Xeon Phi allows
shared memory scaling studies up to 61 cores and 244 hardware threads. We
compare work-stealing (Cilk Plus and TBB) and work-sharing (FIFO scheduling)
approaches. Interestingly, we find that a straightforward thread pool with a
work-sharing FIFO queue shows the best performance. A crucial element for this
high performance is the controlling of the grain size, an approach that we call
Grain Size Controlled Parallel MCTS. Our subsequent comparing with the Xeon
CPUs shows an even more comprehensible distinction in performance between
different threading libraries. We achieve, to the best of our knowledge, the
fastest implementation of a parallel MCTS on the 61 core Intel Xeon Phi using a
real application (47 relative to a sequential run).Comment: 8 pages, 9 figure
Average Sensitivity of Graph Algorithms
In modern applications of graphs algorithms, where the graphs of interest are
large and dynamic, it is unrealistic to assume that an input representation
contains the full information of a graph being studied. Hence, it is desirable
to use algorithms that, even when only a (large) subgraph is available, output
solutions that are close to the solutions output when the whole graph is
available. We formalize this idea by introducing the notion of average
sensitivity of graph algorithms, which is the average earth mover's distance
between the output distributions of an algorithm on a graph and its subgraph
obtained by removing an edge, where the average is over the edges removed and
the distance between two outputs is the Hamming distance.
In this work, we initiate a systematic study of average sensitivity. After
deriving basic properties of average sensitivity such as composition, we
provide efficient approximation algorithms with low average sensitivities for
concrete graph problems, including the minimum spanning forest problem, the
global minimum cut problem, the minimum - cut problem, and the maximum
matching problem. In addition, we prove that the average sensitivity of our
global minimum cut algorithm is almost optimal, by showing a nearly matching
lower bound. We also show that every algorithm for the 2-coloring problem has
average sensitivity linear in the number of vertices. One of the main ideas
involved in designing our algorithms with low average sensitivity is the
following fact; if the presence of a vertex or an edge in the solution output
by an algorithm can be decided locally, then the algorithm has a low average
sensitivity, allowing us to reuse the analyses of known sublinear-time
algorithms and local computation algorithms (LCAs). Using this connection, we
show that every LCA for 2-coloring has linear query complexity, thereby
answering an open question.Comment: 39 pages, 1 figur
Spectrum Bandit Optimization
We consider the problem of allocating radio channels to links in a wireless
network. Links interact through interference, modelled as a conflict graph
(i.e., two interfering links cannot be simultaneously active on the same
channel). We aim at identifying the channel allocation maximizing the total
network throughput over a finite time horizon. Should we know the average radio
conditions on each channel and on each link, an optimal allocation would be
obtained by solving an Integer Linear Program (ILP). When radio conditions are
unknown a priori, we look for a sequential channel allocation policy that
converges to the optimal allocation while minimizing on the way the throughput
loss or {\it regret} due to the need for exploring sub-optimal allocations. We
formulate this problem as a generic linear bandit problem, and analyze it first
in a stochastic setting where radio conditions are driven by a stationary
stochastic process, and then in an adversarial setting where radio conditions
can evolve arbitrarily. We provide new algorithms in both settings and derive
upper bounds on their regrets.Comment: 21 page
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