No Arabic abstract
Vizings celebrated theorem asserts that any graph of maximum degree $Delta$ admits an edge coloring using at most $Delta+1$ colors. In contrast, Bar-Noy, Naor and Motwani showed over a quarter century that the trivial greedy algorithm, which uses $2Delta-1$ colors, is optimal among online algorithms. Their lower bound has a caveat, however: it only applies to low-degree graphs, with $Delta=O(log n)$, and they conjectured the existence of online algorithms using $Delta(1+o(1))$ colors for $Delta=omega(log n)$. Progress towards resolving this conjecture was only made under stochastic arrivals (Aggarwal et al., FOCS03 and Bahmani et al., SODA10). We resolve the above conjecture for emph{adversarial} vertex arrivals in bipartite graphs, for which we present a $(1+o(1))Delta$-edge-coloring algorithm for $Delta=omega(log n)$ known a priori. Surprisingly, if $Delta$ is not known ahead of time, we show that no $big(frac{e}{e-1} - Omega(1) big) Delta$-edge-coloring algorithm exists. We then provide an optimal, $big(frac{e}{e-1}+o(1)big)Delta$-edge-coloring algorithm for unknown $Delta=omega(log n)$. Key to our results, and of possible independent interest, is a novel fractional relaxation for edge coloring, for which we present optimal fractional online algorithms and a near-lossless online rounding scheme, yielding our optimal randomized algorithms.
We consider the following online optimization problem. We are given a graph $G$ and each vertex of the graph is assigned to one of $ell$ servers, where servers have capacity $k$ and we assume that the graph has $ell cdot k$ vertices. Initially, $G$ does not contain any edges and then the edges of $G$ are revealed one-by-one. The goal is to design an online algorithm $operatorname{ONL}$, which always places the connected components induced by the revealed edges on the same server and never exceeds the server capacities by more than $varepsilon k$ for constant $varepsilon>0$. Whenever $operatorname{ONL}$ learns about a new edge, the algorithm is allowed to move vertices from one server to another. Its objective is to minimize the number of vertex moves. More specifically, $operatorname{ONL}$ should minimize the competitive ratio: the total cost $operatorname{ONL}$ incurs compared to an optimal offline algorithm $operatorname{OPT}$. Our main contribution is a polynomial-time randomized algorithm, that is asymptotically optimal: we derive an upper bound of $O(log ell + log k)$ on its competitive ratio and show that no randomized online algorithm can achieve a competitive ratio of less than $Omega(log ell + log k)$. We also settle the open problem of the achievable competitive ratio by deterministic online algorithms, by deriving a competitive ratio of $Theta(ell lg k)$; to this end, we present an improved lower bound as well as a deterministic polynomial-time online algorithm. Our algorithms rely on a novel technique which combines efficient integer programming with a combinatorial approach for maintaining ILP solutions. We believe this technique is of independent interest and will find further applications in the future.
We consider the file maintenance problem (also called the online labeling problem) in which n integer items from the set {1,...,r} are to be stored in an array of size m >= n. The items are presented sequentially in an arbitrary order, and must be stored in the array in sorted order (but not necessarily in consecutive locations in the array). Each new item must be stored in the array before the next item is received. If r<=m then we can simply store item j in location j but if r>m then we may have to shift the location of stored items to make space for a newly arrived item. The algorithm is charged each time an item is stored in the array, or moved to a new location. The goal is to minimize the total number of such moves done by the algorithm. This problem is non-trivial when n=<m<r. In the case that m=Cn for some C>1, algorithms for this problem with cost O(log(n)^2) per item have been given [IKR81, Wil92, BCD+02]. When m=n, algorithms with cost O(log(n)^3) per item were given [Zha93, BS07]. In this paper we prove lower bounds that show that these algorithms are optimal, up to constant factors. Previously, the only lower bound known for this range of parameters was a lower bound of Omega(log(n)^2) for the restricted class of smooth algorithms [DSZ05a, Zha93]. We also provide an algorithm for the sparse case: If the number of items is polylogarithmic in the array size then the problem can be solved in amortized constant time per item.
We show tight bounds for online Hamming distance computation in the cell-probe model with word size w. The task is to output the Hamming distance between a fixed string of length n and the last n symbols of a stream. We give a lower bound of Omega((d/w)*log n) time on average per output, where d is the number of bits needed to represent an input symbol. We argue that this bound is tight within the model. The lower bound holds under randomisation and amortisation.
Nearly thirty years ago, Bar-Noy, Motwani and Naor [IPL92] conjectured that an online $(1+o(1))Delta$-edge-coloring algorithm exists for $n$-node graphs of maximum degree $Delta=omega(log n)$. This conjecture remains open in general, though it was recently proven for bipartite graphs under emph{one-sided vertex arrivals} by Cohen et al.~[FOCS19]. In a similar vein, we study edge coloring under widely-studied relaxations of the online model. Our main result is in the emph{random-order} online model. For this model, known results fall short of the Bar-Noy et al.~conjecture, either in the degree bound [Aggarwal et al.~FOCS03], or number of colors used [Bahmani et al.~SODA10]. We achieve the best of both worlds, thus resolving the Bar-Noy et al.~conjecture in the affirmative for this model. Our second result is in the adversarial online (and dynamic) model with emph{recourse}. A recent algorithm of Duan et al.~[SODA19] yields a $(1+epsilon)Delta$-edge-coloring with poly$(log n/epsilon)$ recourse. We achieve the same with poly$(1/epsilon)$ recourse, thus removing all dependence on $n$. Underlying our results is one common offline algorithm, which we show how to implement in these two online models. Our algorithm, based on the Rodl Nibble Method, is an adaptation of the distributed algorithm of Dubhashi et al.~[TCS98]. The Nibble Method has proven successful for distributed edge coloring. We display its usefulness in the context of online algorithms.
The following online bin packing problem is considered: Items with integer sizes are given and variable sized bins arrive online. A bin must be used if there is still an item remaining which fits in it when the bin arrives. The goal is to minimize the total size of all the bins used. Previously, a lower bound of 5/4 on the competitive ratio of this problem was achieved using jobs of size S and 2S-1. For these item sizes and maximum bin size 4S-3, we obtain asymptotically matching upper and lower bounds, which vary depending on the ratio of the number of small jobs to the number of large jobs.