AE1: An extension matrix approximate method for the general covering problem

A new approach, the extension matrix approach, is introduced and used to show that some optimization problems in general covering problem areNP-hard. Approximate solutions for these problems are given. Combining these approximate solutions, this paper presents an approximately optimal covering algorithm,AE1. Implementation shows thatAE1 is efficient and gives optimal or near optimal results.This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant DCR 84-06801, Office of Naval Research under Grant N00014-82-K-0186, Defense Advanced Research Project Agency under Grant N00014-K-85-0878, and Education Ministry of the People's Republic of China.On leave from Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China.     

Augmented infinitesimal perturbation analysis: An alternate explanation

Augmented infinitesimal perturbation analysis (APA) was introduced by Gaivoronski [1991] to increase the purview of the theory of Infinitesimal Perturbation Analysis (IPA). In reference [Gaivoronski 1991] it is shown that an unbiased estimate for the gradient of a class of performance measures of DEDS represented bygeneralized semi-Markov processes (GSMPs) (cf. [Glynn 1989] can be expressed as a sum of an IPA-estimate and a term that takes into account the event order changes. In this paper we present an alternate approach to establishing the result of Gaivoronski, and from this we derive a necessary and sufficient condition for the validity of the IPA algorithm for this class of performance measures. Finally we validate our results by simulation examples.This research was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant number ECS-85-15449, Office of Naval Research Grants Nos. N00014-90-K-1093 and N00014-89-J-1023 and by Army Grant No. DAAL-03-86-K-0171.     

On the parallel-decomposability of geometric problems

There is a large and growing body of literature concerning the solutions of geometric problems on mesh-connected arrays of processors. Most of these algorithms are optimal (i.e., run in timeO(n ^1/d ) on ad-dimensionaln-processor array), and they all assume that the parallel machine is trying to solve a problem of sizen on ann-processor array. Here we investigate the situation where we have a mesh of sizep and we are interested in using it to solve a problem of sizen >p. The goal we seek is to achieve, when solving a problem of sizen >p, the same speed up as when solving a problem of sizep. We show that for many geometric problems, the same speedup can be achieved when solving a problem of sizen >p as when solving a problem of sizep.The research of M. J. Atallah was supported by the Office of Naval Research under Contracts N00014-84-K-0502 and N00014-86-K-0689, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under Grant AFOSR-90-0107, the National Science Foundation under Grant DCR-8451393, and the National Library of Medicine under Grant R01-LM05118. Jyh-Jong Tsay's research was partially supported by the Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-84-K-0502, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under Grant AFOSR-90-0107, and the National Science Foundation under Grant DCR-8451393.     

Programming simultaneous actions using common knowledge

This work applies the theory of knowledge in distributed systems to the design of efficient fault-tolerant protocols. We define a large class of problems requiring coordinated, simultaneous action in synchronous systems, and give a method of transforming specifications of such problems into protocols that areoptimal in all runs: these protocols are guaranteed to perform the simultaneous actions as soon as any other protocol could possibly perform them, given the input to the system and faulty processor behavior. This transformation is performed in two steps. In the first step we extract, directly from the problem specification, a high-level protocol programmed using explicit tests for common knowledge. In the second step we carefully analyze when facts become common knowledge, thereby providing a method of efficiently implementing these protocols in many variants of the omissions failure model. In the generalized omissions model, however, our analysis shows that testing for common knowledge is NP-hard. Given the close correspondence between common knowledge and simultaneous actions, we are able to show that no optimal protocol for any such problem can be computationally efficient in this model. The analysis in this paper exposes many subtle differences between the failure models, including the precise point at which this gap in complexity occurs.This research was supported by the Office of Naval Research under contract N00014-85-K-0168, by the Office of Army Research under contract DAAG29-84-K-0058, by the National Science Foundation under Grant DCR-8302391, and by the Defense Advanced Research Projects agency (DARPA) under contract N00014-83-K-0125, and was performed while both authors were at MIT. A preliminary version of this work appeared in theProceedings of the 27th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, Toronto, 1986.This author was primarily supported by an IBM postdoctoral fellowship.     

The accelerated centroid decomposition technique for optimal parallel tree evaluation in logarithmic time

A new general parallel algorithmic technique for computations on trees is presented. In particular, it provides the firstn/logn processor,O(logn)-time deterministic EREW PRAM algorithm for expression tree evaluation. The technique solves many other tree problems within the same complexity bounds.Richard Cole was supported in part by NSF Grants DCR-84-01633 and CCR-8702271, ONR Grant N00014-85-K-0046 and by an IBM faculty development award. Uzi Vishkin was supported in part by NSF Grants NSF-CCR-8615337 and NSF-DCR-8413359, ONR Grant N00014-85-K-0046, by the Applied Mathematical Science subprogram of the office of Energy Research, U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC02-76ER03077 and the Foundation for Research in Electronics, Computers and Communication, administered by the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities.     

Topological numbering of features on a mesh

Assume we are given ann ×n binary image containing horizontally convex features; i.e., for each feature, each of its row's pixels form an interval on that row. In this paper we consider the problem of assigning topological numbers to such features, i.e., assign a number to every featuref so that all features to the left off in the image have a smaller number assigned to them. This problem arises in solutions to the stereo matching problem. We present a parallel algorithm to solve the topological numbering problem inO(n) time on ann ×n mesh of processors. The key idea of our solution is to create a tree from which the topological numbers can be obtained even though the tree does not uniquely represent the to the left of relationship of the features.The work of M. J. Atallah was supported by the Office of Naval Research under Grants N00014-84-K-0502 and N00014-86-K-0689, and the National Science Foundation under Grant DCR-8451393, with matching funds from AT&T. Part of this work was done while he was a Visiting Scientist at the Center for Advanced Architectures project of the Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA. S. E. Hambrusch's work was supported by the Office of Naval Research under Contracts N00014-84-K-0502 and N00014-86K-0689, and by the National Science Foundation under Grant MIP-87-15652. Part of this work was done while she was visiting the International Computer Science Institute, Berkeley, CA 94704, USA. The work of L. E. TeWinkel was supported by the Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-86K-0689.     

Pumping lemmas for the control language hierarchy

We investigate a progression of grammatically defined language families, thecontrol language hierarchy. This hierarchy has been studied recently from the perspective of providing a linguistic framework for natural language syntax. We exhibit a progression of pumping lemmas, one for each family in the hierarchy, thereby showing that the hierarchy is strictly separable.The research reported in this paper was conducted in part at the Department of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA, and was supported under ARO Grant DAA29-84-9-0027, NSF Grants MCS-8219116-CER, MCS-82-07294, DCR-84-10413 and MCS-83-05221, and DARPA Grant N00014-85-K-0018.     

Programming language constructs for highly parallel operations on lists

A data structure called strips is described for representing linked lists, which enables unit time access of random list elements. Running parallel prefix on strips effectively converts a list into an array. When combined with nondeterministic statement sequencing and data operations, loops for performing iterations over lists, and insertions and deletions on lists can be parallelized yielding very efficient algorithms. The strips-based representation also allows efficient serial operations on lists, which is important both when loops cannot be parallelized or when there is more parallelism than processors.This work was supported in part under ONR Grant N00014-86-K-0215 and under NSF Grant DCR-8503610.     

Delay point schedules for irregular parallel computations

In irregular scientific computational problems one is periodically forced to choosea delay point where some overhead cost is suffered to ensure correctness, or to improve subsequent performance. Examples of delay points are problem remappings, and global synchronizations. One sometimes has considerable latitude in choosing the placement and frequency of delay points; we consider the problem of scheduling delay points so as to minimize the overal execution time. We illustrate the problem with two examples, a regridding method which changes the problem discretization during the course of the computation, and a method for solving sparse triangular systems of linear equations. We show that one can optimally choose delay points in polynomial time using dynamic programming. However, the cost models underlying this approach are often unknown. We consequently examine a scheduling heuristic based on maximizing performance locally, and empirically show it to be nearly optimal on both problems. We explain this phenomenon analytically by identifying underlying assumptions which imply that overall performance is maximized asymptotically if local performance is maximized.This research was supported in part by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under NASA contract NAS1-18107 while the author consulted at ICASE, Mail Stop 132C, NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia 23665.Supported in part by NASA contract NAS1-18107, the Office of Naval Research under Contract No. N00014-86-K-0654, and NSF Grant DCR 8106181.     

Controllability and stability radii for companion form systems

This paper describes a unifying approach to the computation of certain robustness measures for some calculations involving state space models in control and system theory. These measures include nearness to uncontrollability, nearness to instability, and nearness to unstabilizability and their duals. Specialized results are provided for systems in companion form (controllability canonical form, etc.). It is shown analytically why high-order companion system models have certain undesirable numerical properties. For example, it is shown that almost all highorder companion matrices are nearly singular and almost all high-order controllable canonical forms are nearly uncontrollable. This research was supported by the Office of Naval Research under Contract No. N00014-85-K-0553 and the National Science Foundation (and AFOSR) under Grant No. ECS-8718897.     

Achieving speedups for APL on an SIMD distributed memory machine

The potential speedup for SIMD parallel implementations of APL programs is considered. Both analytical and (simulated) empirical studies are presented. The approach is to recognize that nearly 95% of the operators appearing in APL programs are either scalar primitive, reduction or indexing and so the performance of these operators gives a good estimate of the amount of speedup a full program might receive. Substantial speedups are demonstrated for these operators and the empirical evidence accords with the analytical estimates.This research has been funded by the Office of Naval Research Contract No. N00014-86-K-0264 and the National Science Foundation Grant No. DCR 8416878.     

A bisection method for computing the H∞ norm of a transfer matrix and related problems

We establish a correspondence between the singular values of a transfer matrix evaluated along the imaginary axis and the imaginary eigenvalues of a related Hamiltonian matrix. We give a simple linear algebraic proof, and also a more intuitive explanation based on a certain indefinite quadratic optimal control problem. This result yields a simple bisection algorithm to compute the H_∞ norm of a transfer matrix. The bisection method is far more efficient than algorithms which involve a search over frequencies, and the usual problems associated with such methods (such as determining how fine the search should be) do not arise. The method is readily extended to compute other quantities of system-theoretic interest, for instance, the minimum dissipation of a transfer matrix. A variation of the method can be used to solve the H_∞ Armijo line-search problem with no more computation than is required to compute a single H_∞ norm. Research supported in part by NSF under Grant ECS-85-52465, ONR under Grant N00014-86-K-0112, an IBM faculty development award, and Bell Communications Research.     

Shortest paths in euclidean graphs

We analyze a simple method for finding shortest paths inEuclidean graphs (where vertices are points in a Euclidean space and edge weights are Euclidean distances between points). For many graph models, the average running time of the algorithm to find the shortest path between a specified pair of vertices in a graph withV vertices andE edges is shown to beO(V) as compared withO(E +V logV) required by the classical algorithm due to Dijkstra.Support for the first author was provided in part by NSF Grant MCS-83-08806. Support for the second author was provided in part by NSF Grants MCS-81-05324 and DCR-84-03613, an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, an IBM research contract, and an IBM Faculty Development Award. Support for this research was also provided in part by an ONR and DARPA under Contract N00014-83-K-0146 and ARPA Order No. 4786. Equipment support was provided by NSF Grant MCS-81-218106.     

Ordinal optimization of DEDS

In this paper we argue thatordinal rather thancardinal optimization, i.e., concentrating on finding good, better, or best designs rather than on estimating accurately the performance value of these designs, offers a new, efficient, and complementary approach to the performance optimization of systems. Some experimental and analytical evidence is offered to substantiate this claim. The main purpose of the paper is to call attention to a novel and promising approach to system optimization.This work is supported by NSF grants CDR-88-03012, DDM-89-14277, ONR contracts N00014-90-J-1093, N00014-89-J-1023, and army contracts DAAL-03-83-K-0171, DAAL-91-G-0194.     

Weighted and unweighted maximum clique algorithms with upper bounds from fractional coloring

The linear programming relaxation of the minimum vertex coloring problem, called the fractional coloring problem, is NP-hard. We describe efficient approximation procedures for both the weighted and unweighted versions of the problem. These fractional coloring procedures are then used for generating upper bounds for the (weighted or unweighted) maximum clique problem in the framework of a branch-and-bound procedure. Extensive computational testing shows that replacing the standard upper bounding procedures based on various integer coloring heuristics with the somewhat more expensive fractional coloring procedure results in improvements of the bound by up to one-fourth in the unweighted and up to one-fifth in the weighted case, accompanied by a decrease in the size of the search tree by a factor of almost two.This research was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DDM-9201340 and the Office of Naval Research through Contract N00014-85-K-0198.     

Linear-time algorithms for visibility and shortest path problems inside triangulated simple polygons

Given a triangulation of a simple polygonP, we present linear-time algorithms for solving a collection of problems concerning shortest paths and visibility withinP. These problems include calculation of the collection of all shortest paths insideP from a given source vertexS to all the other vertices ofP, calculation of the subpolygon ofP consisting of points that are visible from a given segment withinP, preprocessingP for fast "ray shooting" queries, and several related problems.Work on this paper by this author has been supported by Office of Naval Research Grant N00014-82-K-0381, National Science Foundation Grant No. NSF-DCR-83-20085, and by grants from the Digital Equipment Corporation, the IBM Corporation, and from the U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation.Work on this paper by this author has been supported by National Science Foundation Grant DCR-86-05962.     

Derivation of efficient parallel programs: An example from genetic sequence analysis

Implementation issues such as synchronization, implementation of abstract data types, and scheduling of processes are usually not addressed in the formal derivation of parallel programs. We seek to redress the situation by considering these issues in the context of developing an efficient implementation of an actual parallel program. The computational problem that we proceed by developingan algorithm in Unity and investigating the issues that arise in producing an efficient C implementation of the resulting algorithm. Along the way, we develop some theorems about program refinements, and illustrate the usefulness of the theorems in the context of refining the original Unity program.Work supported in part by ONR Grants N00014-86-K-0763 and N00014-87-K-0510 while the author was at The University of Texas at Austin.     

Distributed match-making

In many distributed computing environments, processes are concurrently executed by nodes in a store- and-forward communication network. Distributed control issues as diverse as name server, mutual exclusion, and replicated data management involve making matches between such processes. We propose a formal problem called distributed match-making as the generic paradigm. Algorithms for distributed match-making are developed and the complexity is investigated in terms of messages and in terms of storage needed. Lower bounds on the complexity of distributed match-making are established. Optimal algorithms, or nearly optimal algorithms, are given for particular network topologies.The work of the second author was supported in part by the Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-85-K-0168, by the Office of Army Research under Contract DAAG29-84-K-0058, by the National Science Foundation under Grant DCR-83-02391, and by the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under Contract N00014-83-K-0125. Current address of both authors: CWI, Kruislaan 413, 1098 SJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands.     

Optimal parallel verification of minimum spanning trees in logarithmic time

We present the first optimal parallel algorithms for the verification and sensitivity analysis of minimum spanning trees. Our algorithms are deterministic and run inO(logn) time and require linear-work in the CREW PRAM model. These algorithms are used as a subroutine in the linear-work randomized algorithm for finding minimum spanning trees of Cole, Klein, and Tarjan. Research partially supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship and by DIMACS (Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science), a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center, Grant No. NSF-STC88-09648. Research at Princeton University was partially supported by the National Science Foundation, Grant No. CCR-8920505, the Office of Naval Research, Contract No. N00014-91-J-1463, and by DIMACS (Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science), a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center, Grant No. NSF-STC88-09648.     

Parallel processing of biological sequence comparison algorithms

Comparison of biological (DNA or protein) sequences provides insight into molecular structure, function, and homology, and is increasingly important as the available databases become larger and more numerous. One method of increasing the speed of the calculations is to perform them in parallel. We present the results of initial investigations using the Intel iPSC/1 hypercube and the Connection Machine (CM-I) for these comparisons. Since these machines have very different architectures, the issues and performance trade-offs discussed have a wide applicability for the parallel processing of biological sequence comparisons. This research was supported in part by the Office of Naval Research under contact No. N00014-86-K-0310 and by NIH Grant T15 LM07056 from the National Library of Medicine.