Yuval Emek

Liam Brinker, Yuval Emek, Oren Louidor

We introduce a distributed computational model referred to as the \emph{uniform port} model. An algorithm operating in this model is defined by means of local automata associated with the ports (a.k.a.\ half-edges) of the input graph. The crux of the uniform port model is that a single constant-size finite automaton is hosted by every port of every graph, making the model \emph{truly uniform}. Moreover, since the new model explicitly supports the assignment of (input and) output labels to the graph's (half-)edges, it facilitates natural formulations of (half-)edge-labeling problems such as maximal matching and sinkless orientation, which are outside the expressivity scope of prior node-centric truly uniform distributed computational models. The main technical contribution of this paper is the design of efficient (i.e., with poly-logarithmic runtime) \emph{self-stabilizing} uniform port algorithms, operating on general graphs, for various fundamental local symmetry breaking problems, including maximal independent set, maximal matching, sinkless orientation, and maximal node/edge $k$-coloring. While efficient self-stabilizing algorithms for local symmetry breaking problems have been extensively studied in stronger computational models, our work is the first to demonstrate the existence of such algorithms in a truly uniform model.

Yuval Emek, Shay Kutten, Ido Rafael et al.

A novel long-lived distributed problem, called Team Formation (TF), is introduced together with a message- and time-efficient randomized algorithm. The problem is defined over the asynchronous model with a complete communication graph, using bounded size messages, where a certain fraction of the nodes may experience a generalized, strictly stronger, version of initial failures. The goal of a TF algorithm is to assemble tokens injected by the environment, in a distributed manner, into teams of size $σ$, where $σ$ is a parameter of the problem. The usefulness of TF is demonstrated by using it to derive efficient algorithms for many distributed problems. Specifically, we show that various (one-shot as well as long-lived) distributed problems reduce to TF. This includes well-known (and extensively studied) distributed problems such as several versions of leader election and threshold detection. For example, we are the first to break the linear message complexity bound for asynchronous implicit leader election. We also improve the time complexity of message-optimal algorithms for asynchronous explicit leader election. Other distributed problems that reduce to TF are new ones, including matching players in online gaming platforms, a generalization of gathering, constructing a perfect matching in an induced subgraph of the complete graph, quorum sensing in message-passing networks, and more. To complement our positive contribution, we establish a tight lower bound on the message complexity of TF algorithms.

Yuval Emek, Yuval Gil, Maciej Pacut et al.

We introduce a novel method for the rigorous quantitative evaluation of online algorithms that relaxes the "radical worst-case" perspective of classic competitive analysis. In contrast to prior work, our method, referred to as randomly infused advice (RIA), does not make any probabilistic assumptions about the input sequence and does not rely on the development of designated online algorithms. Rather, it can be applied to existing online randomized algorithms, introducing a means to evaluate their performance in scenarios that lie outside the radical worst-case regime. More concretely, an online algorithm ALG with RIA benefits from pieces of advice generated by an omniscient but not entirely reliable oracle. The crux of the new method is that the advice is provided to ALG by writing it into the buffer B from which ALG normally reads its random bits, hence allowing us to augment it through a very simple and non-intrusive interface. The (un)reliability of the oracle is captured via a parameter 0 {\le} α {\le} 1 that determines the probability (per round) that the advice is successfully infused by the oracle; if the advice is not infused, which occurs with probability 1 - α, then the buffer B contains fresh random bits (as in the classic online setting). The applicability of the new RIA method is demonstrated by applying it to three extensively studied online problems: paging, uniform metrical task systems, and online set cover. For these problems, we establish new upper bounds on the competitive ratio of classic online algorithms that improve as the infusion parameter α increases. These are complemented with (often tight) lower bounds on the competitive ratio of online algorithms with RIA for the three problems.

Julien Dallot, Yuval Emek, Yuval Gil et al.

This paper introduces a new model for ML-augmented online decision making, called online algorithms with unreliable guidance (OAG). This model completely separates between the predictive and algorithmic components, thus offering a single well-defined analysis framework that relies solely on the considered problem. Formulated through the lens of request-answer games, an OAG algorithm receives, with each incoming request, a piece of guidance which is taken from the problem's answer space; ideally, this guidance is the optimal answer for the current request, however with probability $β$, the guidance is adversarially corrupted. The goal is to develop OAG algorithms that admit good competitiveness when $β= 0$ (a.k.a. consistency) as well as when $β= 1$ (a.k.a. robustness); the appealing notion of smoothness, that in most prior work required a dedicated loss function, now arises naturally as $β$ shifts from $0$ to $1$. We then describe a systematic method, called the drop or trust blindly (DTB) compiler, which transforms any online algorithm into a learning-augmented online algorithm in the OAG model. Given a prediction-oblivious online algorithm, its learning-augmented counterpart produced by applying the DTB compiler either follows the incoming guidance blindly or ignores it altogether and proceeds as the initial algorithm would have; the choice between these two alternatives is based on the outcome of a (biased) coin toss. As our main technical contribution, we prove (rigorously) that although remarkably simple, the class of algorithms produced via the DTB compiler includes algorithms with attractive consistency-robustness guarantees for three classic online problems: for caching and uniform metrical task systems our algorithms are optimal, whereas for bipartite matching (with adversarial arrival order), our algorithm outperforms the state-of-the-art.

Yuval Emek, Shay Kutten, Yangguang Shi

This paper considers a variant of the online paging problem, where the online algorithm has access to multiple predictors, each producing a sequence of predictions for the page arrival times. The predictors may have occasional prediction errors and it is assumed that at least one of them makes a sublinear number of prediction errors in total. Our main result states that this assumption suffices for the design of a randomized online algorithm whose time-average regret with respect to the optimal offline algorithm tends to zero as the time tends to infinity. This holds (with different regret bounds) for both the full information access model, where in each round, the online algorithm gets the predictions of all predictors, and the bandit access model, where in each round, the online algorithm queries a single predictor. While online algorithms that exploit inaccurate predictions have been a topic of growing interest in the last few years, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that studies this topic in the context of multiple predictors for an online problem with unbounded request sequences. Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, this is also the first paper that aims for (and achieves) online algorithms with a vanishing regret for a classic online problem under reasonable assumptions.

Yuval Emek, Shay Kutten, Ron Lavi et al.

Addressing a fundamental problem in programmable matter, we present the first deterministic algorithm to elect a unique leader in a system of connected amoebots assuming only that amoebots are initially contracted. Previous algorithms either used randomization, made various assumptions (shapes with no holes, or known shared chirality), or elected several co-leaders in some cases. Some of the building blocks we introduce in constructing the algorithm are of interest by themselves, especially the procedure we present for reaching common chirality among the amoebots. Given the leader election and the chirality agreement building block, it is known that various tasks in programmable matter can be performed or improved. The main idea of the new algorithm is the usage of the ability of the amoebots to move, which previous leader election algorithms have not used.