Distributed Reconfiguration of Maximal Independent Sets

In this paper, we investigate a distributed maximal independent set (MIS) reconfiguration problem, in which there are two maximal independent sets for which every node is given its membership status, and the nodes need to communicate with their neighbors in order to find a reconfiguration schedule that switches from the first MIS to the second. Such a schedule is a list of independent sets that is restricted by forbidding two neighbors to change their membership status at the same step. In addition, these independent sets should provide some covering guarantee. We show that obtaining an actual MIS (and even a 3-dominating set) in each intermediate step is impossible. However, we provide efficient solutions when the intermediate sets are only required to be independent and 4-dominating, which is almost always possible, as we fully characterize. Consequently, our goal is to pin down the tradeoff between the possible length of the schedule and the number of communication rounds. We prove that a constant length schedule can be found in O(MIS+R32) rounds, where MIS is the complexity of finding an MIS in a worst-case graph and R32 is the complexity of finding a (3,2)-ruling set. For bounded degree graphs, this is O(log^*n) rounds and we show that it is necessary. On the other extreme, we show that with a constant number of rounds we can find a linear length schedule

Are Lock-Free Concurrent Algorithms Practically Wait-Free?

Lock-free concurrent algorithms guarantee that some concurrent operation will always make progress in a finite number of steps. Yet programmers prefer to treat concurrent code as if it were wait-free, guaranteeing that all operations always make progress. Unfortunately, designing wait-free algorithms is generally a very complex task, and the resulting algorithms are not always efficient. While obtaining efficient wait-free algorithms has been a long-time goal for the theory community, most non-blocking commercial code is only lock-free. This paper suggests a simple solution to this problem. We show that, for a large class of lock- free algorithms, under scheduling conditions which approximate those found in commercial hardware architectures, lock-free algorithms behave as if they are wait-free. In other words, programmers can keep on designing simple lock-free algorithms instead of complex wait-free ones, and in practice, they will get wait-free progress. Our main contribution is a new way of analyzing a general class of lock-free algorithms under a stochastic scheduler. Our analysis relates the individual performance of processes with the global performance of the system using Markov chain lifting between a complex per-process chain and a simpler system progress chain. We show that lock-free algorithms are not only wait-free with probability 1, but that in fact a general subset of lock-free algorithms can be closely bounded in terms of the average number of steps required until an operation completes. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to analyze progress conditions, typically stated in relation to a worst case adversary, in a stochastic model capturing their expected asymptotic behavior.Comment: 25 page

Distributed Connectivity Decomposition

We present time-efficient distributed algorithms for decomposing graphs with large edge or vertex connectivity into multiple spanning or dominating trees, respectively. As their primary applications, these decompositions allow us to achieve information flow with size close to the connectivity by parallelizing it along the trees. More specifically, our distributed decomposition algorithms are as follows: (I) A decomposition of each undirected graph with vertex-connectivity $k$ into (fractionally) vertex-disjoint weighted dominating trees with total weight $\Omega(\frac{k}{\log n})$, in $\widetilde{O}(D+\sqrt{n})$ rounds. (II) A decomposition of each undirected graph with edge-connectivity $\lambda$ into (fractionally) edge-disjoint weighted spanning trees with total weight $\lceil\frac{\lambda-1}{2}\rceil(1-\varepsilon)$, in $\widetilde{O}(D+\sqrt{n\lambda})$ rounds. We also show round complexity lower bounds of $\tilde{\Omega}(D+\sqrt{\frac{n}{k}})$ and $\tilde{\Omega}(D+\sqrt{\frac{n}{\lambda}})$ for the above two decompositions, using techniques of [Das Sarma et al., STOC'11]. Moreover, our vertex-connectivity decomposition extends to centralized algorithms and improves the time complexity of [Censor-Hillel et al., SODA'14] from $O(n^3)$ to near-optimal $\tilde{O}(m)$. As corollaries, we also get distributed oblivious routing broadcast with $O(1)$-competitive edge-congestion and $O(\log n)$-competitive vertex-congestion. Furthermore, the vertex connectivity decomposition leads to near-time-optimal $O(\log n)$-approximation of vertex connectivity: centralized $\widetilde{O}(m)$ and distributed $\tilde{O}(D+\sqrt{n})$. The former moves toward the 1974 conjecture of Aho, Hopcroft, and Ullman postulating an $O(m)$ centralized exact algorithm while the latter is the first distributed vertex connectivity approximation

Optimal Dynamic Distributed MIS

Finding a maximal independent set (MIS) in a graph is a cornerstone task in distributed computing. The local nature of an MIS allows for fast solutions in a static distributed setting, which are logarithmic in the number of nodes or in their degrees. The result trivially applies for the dynamic distributed model, in which edges or nodes may be inserted or deleted. In this paper, we take a different approach which exploits locality to the extreme, and show how to update an MIS in a dynamic distributed setting, either \emph{synchronous} or \emph{asynchronous}, with only \emph{a single adjustment} and in a single round, in expectation. These strong guarantees hold for the \emph{complete fully dynamic} setting: Insertions and deletions, of edges as well as nodes, gracefully and abruptly. This strongly separates the static and dynamic distributed models, as super-constant lower bounds exist for computing an MIS in the former. Our results are obtained by a novel analysis of the surprisingly simple solution of carefully simulating the greedy \emph{sequential} MIS algorithm with a random ordering of the nodes. As such, our algorithm has a direct application as a $3$-approximation algorithm for correlation clustering. This adds to the important toolbox of distributed graph decompositions, which are widely used as crucial building blocks in distributed computing. Finally, our algorithm enjoys a useful \emph{history-independence} property, meaning the output is independent of the history of topology changes that constructed that graph. This means the output cannot be chosen, or even biased, by the adversary in case its goal is to prevent us from optimizing some objective function.Comment: 19 pages including appendix and reference

Distributed Detection of Cliques in Dynamic Networks

This paper provides an in-depth study of the fundamental problems of finding small subgraphs in distributed dynamic networks. While some problems are trivially easy to handle, such as detecting a triangle that emerges after an edge insertion, we show that, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, other problems exhibit a wide range of complexities in terms of the trade-offs between their round and bandwidth complexities. In the case of triangles, which are only affected by the topology of the immediate neighborhood, some end results are: - The bandwidth complexity of 1-round dynamic triangle detection or listing is Theta(1). - The bandwidth complexity of 1-round dynamic triangle membership listing is Theta(1) for node/edge deletions, Theta(n^{1/2}) for edge insertions, and Theta(n) for node insertions. - The bandwidth complexity of 1-round dynamic triangle membership detection is Theta(1) for node/edge deletions, O(log n) for edge insertions, and Theta(n) for node insertions. Most of our upper and lower bounds are tight. Additionally, we provide almost always tight upper and lower bounds for larger cliques