We study the fundamental problem of approximate nearest neighbor search in $d$-dimensional Hamming space $\{0,1\}^d$. We study the complexity of the problem in the famous cell-probe model, a classic model for data structures. We consider algorithms in the cell-probe model with limited adaptivity, where the algorithm makes $k$ rounds of parallel accesses to the data structure for a given $k$. For any $k\ge 1$, we give a simple randomized algorithm solving the approximate nearest neighbor search using $k$ rounds of parallel memory accesses, with $O(k(\log d)^{1/k})$ accesses in total. We also give a more sophisticated randomized algorithm using $O(k+(\frac{1}{k}\log d)^{O(1/k)})$ memory accesses in $k$ rounds for large enough $k$. Both algorithms use data structures of size polynomial in $n$, the number of points in the database.
For the lower bound, we prove an $Ω(\frac{1}{k}(\log d)^{1/k})$ lower bound for the total number of memory accesses required by any randomized algorithm solving the approximate nearest neighbor search within $k\le\frac{\log\log d}{2\log\log\log d}$ rounds of parallel memory accesses on any data structures of polynomial size. This lower bound shows that our first algorithm is asymptotically optimal for any constant round $k$. And our second algorithm approaches the asymptotically optimal tradeoff between rounds and memory accesses, in a sense that the lower bound of memory accesses for any $k_1$ rounds can be matched by the algorithm within $k_2=O(k_1)$ rounds. In the extreme, for some large enough $k=Θ\left(\frac{\log\log d}{\log\log\log d}\right)$, our second algorithm matches the $Θ\left(\frac{\log\log d}{\log\log\log d}\right)$ tight bound for fully adaptive algorithms for approximate nearest neighbor search due to Chakrabarti and Regev.
Sharp Two-Round Adaptivity and Round Hierarchies for Semantic Regular Expressions
The State Key Laboratory of Blockchain and Data Security, Zhejiang University（浙江大学区块链与数据安全国家重点实验室）；School of Computing and Artificial Intelligence, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics（上海财经大学计算机与人工智能学院）；The State Key Laboratory of Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University（南京大学软件新技术国家重点实验室）
Submodular function minimization (SFM) and matroid intersection are fundamental discrete optimization problems with applications in many fields. It is well known that both of these can be solved making $\mathrm{poly}(N)$ queries to a relevant oracle (evaluation oracle for SFM and rank oracle for matroid intersection), where $N$ denotes the universe size. However, all known polynomial query algorithms are highly adaptive, requiring at least $N$ rounds of querying the oracle. A natural question is whether these can be efficiently solved in a highly parallel manner, namely, with $\mathrm{poly}(N)…
Approximate K nearest neighbor (AKNN) search is a fundamental and challenging problem. We observe that in high-dimensional space, the time consumption of nearly all AKNN algorithms is dominated by that of the distance comparison operations (DCOs). For each operation, it scans full dimensions of an object and thus, runs in linear time wrt the dimensionality. To speed it up, we propose a randomized algorithm named ADSampling which runs in logarithmic time wrt to the dimensionality for the majority of DCOs and succeeds with high probability. In addition, based on ADSampling we develop one general…
We study the problem of finding a spanning forest in an undirected, $n$-vertex multi-graph under two basic query models. One is the Linear query model which are linear measurements on the incidence vector induced by the edges; the other is the weaker OR query model which only reveals whether a given subset of plausible edges is empty or not. At the heart of our study lies a fundamental problem which we call the {\em single element recovery} problem: given a non-negative real vector $x$ in $N$ dimension, return a single element $x_j > 0$ from the support. Queries can be made in rounds, and our …
The $K$-nearest neighbors is a basic problem in machine learning with numerous applications. In this problem, given a (training) set of $n$ data points with labels and a query point $p$, we want to assign a label to $p$ based on the labels of the $K$-nearest points to the query. We study this problem in the {\em $k$-machine model}, (Note that parameter $k$ stands for the number of machines in the $k$-machine model and is independent of $K$-nearest points.) a model for distributed large-scale data. In this model, we assume that the $n$ points are distributed (in a balanced fashion) among the $k…
We consider online $k$-means clustering where each new point is assigned to the nearest cluster center, after which the algorithm may update its centers. The loss incurred is the sum of squared distances from new points to their assigned cluster centers. The goal over a data stream $X$ is to achieve loss that is a constant factor of $L(X, OPT_k)$, the best possible loss using $k$ fixed points in hindsight. We propose a data parameter, $Λ(X)$, such that for any algorithm maintaining $O(k\text{poly}(\log n))$ centers at time $n$, there exists a data stream $X$ for which a loss of $Ω(Λ(X))$ is in…
Let $S$ be a planar $n$-point set. A triangulation for $S$ is a maximal plane straight-line graph with vertex set $S$. The Voronoi diagram for $S$ is the subdivision of the plane into cells such that all points in a cell have the same nearest neighbor in $S$. Classically, both structures can be computed in $O(n \log n)$ time and $O(n)$ space. We study the situation when the available workspace is limited: given a parameter $s \in \{1, \dots, n\}$, an $s$-workspace algorithm has read-only access to an input array with the points from $S$ in arbitrary order, and it may use only $O(s)$ additional…
Tight Running Time Lower Bounds for Strong Inapproximability of Maximum $k$-Coverage, Unique Set Cover and Related Problems (via $t$-Wise Agreement Testing Theorem)
