Computer Science – Distributed – Parallel – and Cluster Computing
Scientific paper
2010-11-24
Computer Science
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
53 pages, preliminary version in ACM PODC 2004 and ACM-SIAM SODA 2006
Scientific paper
The question of what can be computed, and how efficiently, are at the core of computer science. Not surprisingly, in distributed systems and networking research, an equally fundamental question is what can be computed in a distributed fashion. More precisely, if nodes of a network must base their decision on information in their local neighborhood only, how well can they compute or approximate a global (optimization) problem? In this paper we give the first substantial lower bound on such local computation for (optimization) problems including minimum vertex cover, minimum (connected) dominating set, maximum matching, maximal independent set, and maximal matching. In addition we present a new distributed algorithm for solving general covering and packing linear programs. For some problems this algorithm is tight with the lower bounds, for others it is a distributed approximation scheme. Together, our lower and upper bounds establish the local computability and approximability of a large class of problems, characterizing how much local information is required to solve these tasks.
Kuhn Fabian
Moscibroda Thomas
Wattenhofer Roger
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