116 research outputs found
Parallel Exhaustive Search without Coordination
We analyze parallel algorithms in the context of exhaustive search over
totally ordered sets. Imagine an infinite list of "boxes", with a "treasure"
hidden in one of them, where the boxes' order reflects the importance of
finding the treasure in a given box. At each time step, a search protocol
executed by a searcher has the ability to peek into one box, and see whether
the treasure is present or not. By equally dividing the workload between them,
searchers can find the treasure times faster than one searcher.
However, this straightforward strategy is very sensitive to failures (e.g.,
crashes of processors), and overcoming this issue seems to require a large
amount of communication. We therefore address the question of designing
parallel search algorithms maximizing their speed-up and maintaining high
levels of robustness, while minimizing the amount of resources for
coordination. Based on the observation that algorithms that avoid communication
are inherently robust, we analyze the best running time performance of
non-coordinating algorithms. Specifically, we devise non-coordinating
algorithms that achieve a speed-up of for two searchers, a speed-up of
for three searchers, and in general, a speed-up of
for any searchers. Thus, asymptotically, the speed-up is only four
times worse compared to the case of full-coordination, and our algorithms are
surprisingly simple and hence applicable. Moreover, these bounds are tight in a
strong sense as no non-coordinating search algorithm can achieve better
speed-ups. Overall, we highlight that, in faulty contexts in which coordination
between the searchers is technically difficult to implement, intrusive with
respect to privacy, and/or costly in term of resources, it might well be worth
giving up on coordination, and simply run our non-coordinating exhaustive
search algorithms
Low diameter graph decompositions by approximate distance computation
In many models for large-scale computation, decomposition of the problem is key to efficient algorithms. For distance-related graph problems, it is often crucial that such a decomposition results in clusters of small diameter, while the probability that an edge is cut by the decomposition scales linearly with the length of the edge. There is a large body of literature on low diameter graph decomposition with small edge cutting probabilities, with all existing techniques heavily building on single source shortest paths (SSSP) computations. Unfortunately, in many theoretical models for large-scale computations, the SSSP task constitutes a complexity bottleneck. Therefore, it is desirable to replace exact SSSP computations with approximate ones. However this imposes a fundamental challenge since the existing constructions of low diameter graph decomposition with small edge cutting probabilities inherently rely on the subtractive form of the triangle inequality, which fails to hold under distance approximation. The current paper overcomes this obstacle by developing a technique termed blurry ball growing. By combining this technique with a clever algorithmic idea of Miller et al. (SPAA 2013), we obtain a construction of low diameter decompositions with small edge cutting probabilities which replaces exact SSSP computations by (a small number of) approximate ones. The utility of our approach is showcased by deriving efficient algorithms that work in the CONGEST, PRAM, and semi-streaming models of computation. As an application, we obtain metric tree embedding algorithms in the vein of Bartal (FOCS 1996) whose computational complexities in these models are optimal up to polylogarithmic factors. Our embeddings have the additional useful property that the tree can be mapped back to the original graph such that each edge is “used” only logaritmically many times, which is of interest for capacitated problems and simulating CONGEST algorithms on the tree into which the graph is embedded
Distributed algorithms for low stretch spanning trees
Given an undirected graph with integer edge lengths, we study the problem of approximating the distances in the graph by a spanning tree based on the notion of stretch. Our main contribution is a distributed algorithm in the CONGEST model of computation that constructs a random spanning tree with the guarantee that the expected stretch of every edge is O(log3 n), where n is the number of nodes in the graph. If the graph is unweighted, then this algorithm can be implemented to run in O(D) rounds, where D is the hop-diameter of the graph, thus being asymptotically optimal. In the weighted case, the run-time of our algorithm matches the currently best known bound for exact distance computations, i.e., Õ(min{√nD, √nD1/4 + n3/5 + D}). We stress that this is the first distributed construction of spanning trees leading to poly-logarithmic expected stretch with non-trivial running time
On Online Labeling with Polynomially Many Labels
In the online labeling problem with parameters n and m we are presented with
a sequence of n keys from a totally ordered universe U and must assign each
arriving key a label from the label set {1,2,...,m} so that the order of labels
(strictly) respects the ordering on U. As new keys arrive it may be necessary
to change the labels of some items; such changes may be done at any time at
unit cost for each change. The goal is to minimize the total cost. An
alternative formulation of this problem is the file maintenance problem, in
which the items, instead of being labeled, are maintained in sorted order in an
array of length m, and we pay unit cost for moving an item.
For the case m=cn for constant c>1, there are known algorithms that use at
most O(n log(n)^2) relabelings in total [Itai, Konheim, Rodeh, 1981], and it
was shown recently that this is asymptotically optimal [Bul\'anek, Kouck\'y,
Saks, 2012]. For the case of m={\Theta}(n^C) for C>1, algorithms are known that
use O(n log n) relabelings. A matching lower bound was claimed in [Dietz,
Seiferas, Zhang, 2004]. That proof involved two distinct steps: a lower bound
for a problem they call prefix bucketing and a reduction from prefix bucketing
to online labeling. The reduction seems to be incorrect, leaving a (seemingly
significant) gap in the proof. In this paper we close the gap by presenting a
correct reduction to prefix bucketing. Furthermore we give a simplified and
improved analysis of the prefix bucketing lower bound. This improvement allows
us to extend the lower bounds for online labeling to the case where the number
m of labels is superpolynomial in n. In particular, for superpolynomial m we
get an asymptotically optimal lower bound {\Omega}((n log n) / (log log m - log
log n)).Comment: 15 pages, Presented at European Symposium on Algorithms 201
Node Labels in Local Decision
The role of unique node identifiers in network computing is well understood
as far as symmetry breaking is concerned. However, the unique identifiers also
leak information about the computing environment - in particular, they provide
some nodes with information related to the size of the network. It was recently
proved that in the context of local decision, there are some decision problems
such that (1) they cannot be solved without unique identifiers, and (2) unique
node identifiers leak a sufficient amount of information such that the problem
becomes solvable (PODC 2013).
In this work we give study what is the minimal amount of information that we
need to leak from the environment to the nodes in order to solve local decision
problems. Our key results are related to scalar oracles that, for any given
, provide a multiset of labels; then the adversary assigns the
labels to the nodes in the network. This is a direct generalisation of the
usual assumption of unique node identifiers. We give a complete
characterisation of the weakest oracle that leaks at least as much information
as the unique identifiers.
Our main result is the following dichotomy: we classify scalar oracles as
large and small, depending on their asymptotic behaviour, and show that (1) any
large oracle is at least as powerful as the unique identifiers in the context
of local decision problems, while (2) for any small oracle there are local
decision problems that still benefit from unique identifiers.Comment: Conference version to appear in the proceedings of SIROCCO 201
Distributed Deterministic Broadcasting in Uniform-Power Ad Hoc Wireless Networks
Development of many futuristic technologies, such as MANET, VANET, iThings,
nano-devices, depend on efficient distributed communication protocols in
multi-hop ad hoc networks. A vast majority of research in this area focus on
design heuristic protocols, and analyze their performance by simulations on
networks generated randomly or obtained in practical measurements of some
(usually small-size) wireless networks. %some library. Moreover, they often
assume access to truly random sources, which is often not reasonable in case of
wireless devices. In this work we use a formal framework to study the problem
of broadcasting and its time complexity in any two dimensional Euclidean
wireless network with uniform transmission powers. For the analysis, we
consider two popular models of ad hoc networks based on the
Signal-to-Interference-and-Noise Ratio (SINR): one with opportunistic links,
and the other with randomly disturbed SINR. In the former model, we show that
one of our algorithms accomplishes broadcasting in rounds, where
is the number of nodes and is the diameter of the network. If nodes
know a priori the granularity of the network, i.e., the inverse of the
maximum transmission range over the minimum distance between any two stations,
a modification of this algorithm accomplishes broadcasting in
rounds.
Finally, we modify both algorithms to make them efficient in the latter model
with randomly disturbed SINR, with only logarithmic growth of performance.
Ours are the first provably efficient and well-scalable, under the two
models, distributed deterministic solutions for the broadcast task.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1207.673
Interval Selection in the Streaming Model
A set of intervals is independent when the intervals are pairwise disjoint.
In the interval selection problem we are given a set of intervals
and we want to find an independent subset of intervals of largest cardinality.
Let denote the cardinality of an optimal solution. We
discuss the estimation of in the streaming model, where we
only have one-time, sequential access to the input intervals, the endpoints of
the intervals lie in , and the amount of the memory is
constrained.
For intervals of different sizes, we provide an algorithm in the data stream
model that computes an estimate of that, with
probability at least , satisfies . For same-length
intervals, we provide another algorithm in the data stream model that computes
an estimate of that, with probability at
least , satisfies . The space used by our algorithms is bounded
by a polynomial in and . We also show that no better
estimations can be achieved using bits of storage.
We also develop new, approximate solutions to the interval selection problem,
where we want to report a feasible solution, that use
space. Our algorithms for the interval selection problem match the optimal
results by Emek, Halld{\'o}rsson and Ros{\'e}n [Space-Constrained Interval
Selection, ICALP 2012], but are much simpler.Comment: Minor correction
Semi-Streaming Set Cover
This paper studies the set cover problem under the semi-streaming model. The
underlying set system is formalized in terms of a hypergraph whose
edges arrive one-by-one and the goal is to construct an edge cover with the objective of minimizing the cardinality (or cost in the weighted
case) of . We consider a parameterized relaxation of this problem, where
given some , the goal is to construct an edge -cover, namely, a subset of edges incident to all but an
-fraction of the vertices (or their benefit in the weighted case).
The key limitation imposed on the algorithm is that its space is limited to
(poly)logarithmically many bits per vertex.
Our main result is an asymptotically tight trade-off between and
the approximation ratio: We design a semi-streaming algorithm that on input
graph , constructs a succinct data structure such that for
every , an edge -cover that approximates
the optimal edge \mbox{(-)cover} within a factor of can be
extracted from (efficiently and with no additional space
requirements), where In particular for the traditional
set cover problem we obtain an -approximation. This algorithm is
proved to be best possible by establishing a family (parameterized by
) of matching lower bounds.Comment: Full version of the extended abstract that will appear in Proceedings
of ICALP 2014 track
Exploration of Finite 2D Square Grid by a Metamorphic Robotic System
We consider exploration of finite 2D square grid by a metamorphic robotic
system consisting of anonymous oblivious modules. The number of possible shapes
of a metamorphic robotic system grows as the number of modules increases. The
shape of the system serves as its memory and shows its functionality. We
consider the effect of global compass on the minimum number of modules
necessary to explore a finite 2D square grid. We show that if the modules agree
on the directions (north, south, east, and west), three modules are necessary
and sufficient for exploration from an arbitrary initial configuration,
otherwise five modules are necessary and sufficient for restricted initial
configurations
Online Makespan Minimization with Parallel Schedules
In online makespan minimization a sequence of jobs
has to be scheduled on identical parallel machines so as to minimize the
maximum completion time of any job. We investigate the problem with an
essentially new model of resource augmentation. Here, an online algorithm is
allowed to build several schedules in parallel while processing . At
the end of the scheduling process the best schedule is selected. This model can
be viewed as providing an online algorithm with extra space, which is invested
to maintain multiple solutions. The setting is of particular interest in
parallel processing environments where each processor can maintain a single or
a small set of solutions.
We develop a (4/3+\eps)-competitive algorithm, for any 0<\eps\leq 1, that
uses a number of 1/\eps^{O(\log (1/\eps))} schedules. We also give a
(1+\eps)-competitive algorithm, for any 0<\eps\leq 1, that builds a
polynomial number of (m/\eps)^{O(\log (1/\eps) / \eps)} schedules. This value
depends on but is independent of the input . The performance
guarantees are nearly best possible. We show that any algorithm that achieves a
competitiveness smaller than 4/3 must construct schedules. Our
algorithms make use of novel guessing schemes that (1) predict the optimum
makespan of a job sequence to within a factor of 1+\eps and (2)
guess the job processing times and their frequencies in . In (2) we
have to sparsify the universe of all guesses so as to reduce the number of
schedules to a constant.
The competitive ratios achieved using parallel schedules are considerably
smaller than those in the standard problem without resource augmentation
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