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Optimal Local Algorithms via Topology-Sensitivity

Project description

Understanding locality for improved networks and load balancing

The rapid expansion of digitalisation, data technologies, and networks has driven substantial growth across sectors, delivering numerous benefits. However, this progress has also led to the emergence of massive networks alongside rising infrastructure costs and demands. The ERC-funded OLA-TOPSENS project will investigate the locality question: what can be computed using only local information and how much information is required? Addressing this question is critical for optimising these vast networks and improving the distribution of loads and tasks within them. Additionally, the findings could have broader applications in various areas of algorithmics. The project will use innovative analysis and research to develop a fundamental understanding of locality.

Objective

Considering the rapid growth of data sets and network sizes over the past decade, there is little doubt that the future of computation is distributed. One central aspect lying at the heart of distributed algorithms is the question of locality: what can be computed using only local information, and how much information is needed? While answering this question is essential for obtaining highly efficient algorithms for many important distributed problemssuch as load balancing in massive networks, locality is a fundamentally important concept also in many other fields of algorithmics, such as classical sequential algorithms, massively parallel algorithms, dynamic algorithms, sublinear algorithms, streaming algorithms, or online algorithms.

In the context of distributed algorithms, a careful analysis of recent research on impossibilities reveals the key challenges in understanding localityand therefore in designing optimal algorithmsfor many graph problems: understanding 1) how to solve tree-like structures efficiently and 2) how to explicitly exploit any deviations from a tree-like topology algorithmically. The goal of this proposal is to gain a fundamental understanding of locality via the novel concept of topology-sensitive algorithms that precisely addresses these key challenges by explicitly exploiting local topological features in the input instance. Such an understanding will result in optimal algorithms and tight complexity bounds for many important distributed problems, thereby resolving central questions in distributed algorithms that have been open for decades, laying the foundations for highly efficient and scalable algorithms in massive networks, and implying significant improvements over the state-of-the-art in a variety of other algorithmic fields. In a nutshell, the proposed project aims at a world in which everything that can be done locally will be done locally.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

Keywords

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Funding Scheme

HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants

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Call for proposal

(opens in new window) ERC-2024-STG

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Host institution

CISPA - HELMHOLTZ-ZENTRUM FUR INFORMATIONSSICHERHEIT GGMBH
Net EU contribution
€ 1 499 456,00
Address
STUHLSATZENHAUS 5
66123 SAARBRUCKEN
Germany
Region
Berlin Berlin Berlin
Activity type
Research Organisations
Links
Total cost
€ 1 499 456,00

Beneficiaries (1)