Lower Bounds for Maximal Matchings and Maximal Independent Sets

There are distributed graph algorithms for finding maximal matchings and maximal independent sets in O ( Δ + log * n ) communication rounds; here, n is the number of nodes and Δ is the maximum degree. The lower bound by Linial (1987, 1992) shows that the dependency on n is optimal: These problems cannot be solved in o (log * n ) rounds even if Δ = 2. However, the dependency on Δ is a long-standing open question, and there is currently an exponential gap between the upper and lower bounds. We prove that the upper bounds are tight. We show that any algorithm that finds a maximal matching or maximal independent set with probability at least 1-1/ n requires Ω (min { Δ , log log n / log log log n }) rounds in the LOCAL model of distributed computing. As a corollary, it follows that any deterministic algorithm that finds a maximal matching or maximal independent set requires Ω (min { Δ , log n / log log n }) rounds; this is an improvement over prior lower bounds also as a function of n .

A Deamortization Approach for Dynamic Spanner and Dynamic Maximal Matching

Many dynamic graph algorithms have an amortized update time, rather than a stronger worst-case guarantee. But amortized data structures are not suitable for real-time systems, where each individual operation has to be executed quickly. For this reason, there exist many recent randomized results that aim to provide a guarantee stronger than amortized expected. The strongest possible guarantee for a randomized algorithm is that it is always correct (Las Vegas) and has high-probability worst-case update time, which gives a bound on the time for each individual operation that holds with high probability. In this article, we present the first polylogarithmic high-probability worst-case time bounds for the dynamic spanner and the dynamic maximal matching problem. (1) For dynamic spanner, the only known o ( n ) worst-case bounds were O ( n 3/4 ) high-probability worst-case update time for maintaining a 3-spanner and O ( n 5/9 ) for maintaining a 5-spanner. We give a O (1) k log 3 ( n ) high-probability worst-case time bound for maintaining a ( 2k-1 )-spanner, which yields the first worst-case polylog update time for all constant k . (All the results above maintain the optimal tradeoff of stretch 2k-1 and Õ( n 1+1/k ) edges.) (2) For dynamic maximal matching, or dynamic 2-approximate maximum matching, no algorithm with o(n) worst-case time bound was known and we present an algorithm with O (log 5 ( n )) high-probability worst-case time; similar worst-case bounds existed only for maintaining a matching that was (2+ϵ)-approximate, and hence not maximal. Our results are achieved using a new approach for converting amortized guarantees to worst-case ones for randomized data structures by going through a third type of guarantee, which is a middle ground between the two above: An algorithm is said to have worst-case expected update time ɑ if for every update σ, the expected time to process σ is at most ɑ. Although stronger than amortized expected, the worst-case expected guarantee does not resolve the fundamental problem of amortization: A worst-case expected update time of O(1) still allows for the possibility that every 1/ f(n) updates requires ϴ ( f(n) ) time to process, for arbitrarily high f(n) . In this article, we present a black-box reduction that converts any data structure with worst-case expected update time into one with a high-probability worst-case update time: The query time remains the same, while the update time increases by a factor of O (log 2(n) ). Thus, we achieve our results in two steps: (1) First, we show how to convert existing dynamic graph algorithms with amortized expected polylogarithmic running times into algorithms with worst-case expected polylogarithmic running times. (2) Then, we use our black-box reduction to achieve the polylogarithmic high-probability worst-case time bound. All our algorithms are Las-Vegas-type algorithms.

Graph Sparsification for Derandomizing Massively Parallel Computation with Low Space

The Massively Parallel Computation (MPC) model is an emerging model that distills core aspects of distributed and parallel computation, developed as a tool to solve combinatorial (typically graph) problems in systems of many machines with limited space. Recent work has focused on the regime in which machines have sublinear (in n , the number of nodes in the input graph) space, with randomized algorithms presented for the fundamental problems of Maximal Matching and Maximal Independent Set. However, there have been no prior corresponding deterministic algorithms. A major challenge underlying the sublinear space setting is that the local space of each machine might be too small to store all edges incident to a single node. This poses a considerable obstacle compared to classical models in which each node is assumed to know and have easy access to its incident edges. To overcome this barrier, we introduce a new graph sparsification technique that deterministically computes a low-degree subgraph, with the additional property that solving the problem on this subgraph provides significant progress towards solving the problem for the original input graph. Using this framework to derandomize the well-known algorithm of Luby [SICOMP’86], we obtain O (log Δ + log log n )-round deterministic MPC algorithms for solving the problems of Maximal Matching and Maximal Independent Set with O ( n ɛ ) space on each machine for any constant ɛ > 0. These algorithms also run in O (log Δ) rounds in the closely related model of CONGESTED CLIQUE, improving upon the state-of-the-art bound of O (log 2 Δ) rounds by Censor-Hillel et al. [DISC’17].