The Min-Max Complexity of Distributed Stochastic Convex Optimization with Intermittent Communication

Abstract

We resolve the min-max complexity of distributed stochastic convex optimization (up to a log factor) in the intermittent communication setting, where $M$ machines work in parallel over the course of $R$ rounds of communication to optimize the objective, and during each round of communication, each machine may sequentially compute $K$ stochastic gradient estimates. We present a novel lower bound with a matching upper bound that establishes an optimal algorithm.

Cite

Text

Woodworth et al. "The Min-Max Complexity of Distributed Stochastic Convex Optimization with Intermittent Communication." Conference on Learning Theory, 2021.

Markdown

[Woodworth et al. "The Min-Max Complexity of Distributed Stochastic Convex Optimization with Intermittent Communication." Conference on Learning Theory, 2021.](https://mlanthology.org/colt/2021/woodworth2021colt-minmax/)

BibTeX

@inproceedings{woodworth2021colt-minmax,
  title     = {{The Min-Max Complexity of Distributed Stochastic Convex Optimization with Intermittent Communication}},
  author    = {Woodworth, Blake E and Bullins, Brian and Shamir, Ohad and Srebro, Nathan},
  booktitle = {Conference on Learning Theory},
  year      = {2021},
  pages     = {4386-4437},
  volume    = {134},
  url       = {https://mlanthology.org/colt/2021/woodworth2021colt-minmax/}
}