arXiv subjects

Hoang Dau

Publications and source records attributed to Hoang Dau.

13 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2023

Transition Waste Optimization for Coded Elastic Computing

Distributed computing, in which a resource-intensive task is divided into subtasks and distributed among different machines, plays a key role in solving large-scale problems. Coded computing is a recently emerging paradigm where redundancy for distributed computing is introduced to alleviate the impact of slow machines (stragglers) on the completion time. We investigate coded computing solutions over elastic resources, where the set of available machines may change in the middle of the computation. This is motivated by recently available services in the cloud computing industry (e.g., EC2 Spot, Azure Batch) where low-priority virtual machines are offered at a fraction of the price of the on-demand instances but can be preempted on short notice. Our contributions are three-fold. We first introduce a new concept called transition waste that quantifies the number of tasks existing machines must abandon or take over when a machine joins/leaves. We then develop an efficient method to minimize the transition waste for the cyclic task allocation scheme recently proposed in the literature (Yang et al. ISIT'19). Finally, we establish a novel solution based on finite geometry achieving zero transition wastes given that the number of active machines varies within a fixed range.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2020

Locally Decodable Index Codes

An index code for broadcast channel with receiver side information is locally decodable if each receiver can decode its demand by observing only a subset of the transmitted codeword symbols instead of the entire codeword. Local decodability in index coding is known to reduce receiver complexity, improve user privacy and decrease decoding error probability in wireless fading channels. Conventional index coding solutions assume that the receivers observe the entire codeword, and as a result, for these codes the number of codeword symbols queried by a user per decoded message symbol, which we refer to as locality, could be large. In this paper, we pose the index coding problem as that of minimizing the broadcast rate for a given value of locality (or vice versa) and designing codes that achieve the optimal trade-off between locality and rate. We identify the optimal broadcast rate corresponding to the minimum possible value of locality for all single unicast problems. We present new structural properties of index codes which allow us to characterize the optimal trade-off achieved by: vector linear codes when the side information graph is a directed cycle; and scalar linear codes when the minrank of the side information graph is one less than the order of the problem. We also identify the optimal trade-off among all codes, including non-linear codes, when the side information graph is a directed 3-cycle. Finally, we present techniques to design locally decodable index codes for arbitrary single unicast problems and arbitrary values of locality.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2020

Repairing Reed-Solomon Codes via Subspace Polynomials

We propose new repair schemes for Reed-Solomon codes that use subspace polynomials and hence generalize previous works in the literature that employ trace polynomials. The Reed-Solomon codes are over $\mathbb{F}_{q^\ell}$ and have redundancy $r = n-k \geq q^m$, $1\leq m\leq \ell$, where $n$ and $k$ are the code length and dimension, respectively. In particular, for one erasure, we show that our schemes can achieve optimal repair bandwidths whenever $n=q^\ell$ and $r = q^m,$ for all $1 \leq m \leq \ell$. For two erasures, our schemes use the same bandwidth per erasure as the single erasure schemes, for $\ell/m$ is a power of $q$, and for $\ell=q^a$, $m=q^b-1>1$ ($a \geq b \geq 1$), and for $m\geq \ell/2$ when $\ell$ is even and $q$ is a power of two.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2020

Repairing Reed-Solomon Codes With Multiple Erasures

Despite their exceptional error-correcting properties, Reed-Solomon codes have been overlooked in distributed storage applications due to the common belief that they have poor repair bandwidth: A naive repair approach would require the whole file to be reconstructed in order to recover a single erased codeword symbol. In a recent work, Guruswami and Wootters (STOC'16) proposed a single-erasure repair method for Reed-Solomon codes that achieves the optimal repair bandwidth amongst all linear encoding schemes. Their key idea is to recover the erased symbol by collecting a sufficiently large number of its traces, each of which can be constructed from a number of traces of other symbols. We extend the trace collection technique to cope with two and three erasures.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2020

MaxMinSum Steiner Systems for Access-Balancing in Distributed Storage

Many code families such as low-density parity-check codes, fractional repetition codes, batch codes and private information retrieval codes with low storage overhead rely on the use of combinatorial block designs or derivatives thereof. In the context of distributed storage applications, one is often faced with system design issues that impose additional constraints on the coding schemes, and therefore on the underlying block designs. Here, we address one such problem, pertaining to server access frequency balancing, by introducing a new form of Steiner systems, termed MaxMinSum Steiner systems. MaxMinSum Steiner systems are characterized by the property that the minimum value of the sum of points (elements) within a block is maximized, or that the minimum sum of block indices containing some fixed point is maximized. We show that proper relabelings of points in the Bose and Skolem constructions for Steiner triple systems lead to optimal MaxMin values for the sums of interest; for the duals of the designs, we exhibit block labelings that are within a 3/4 multiplicative factor from the optimum.

math.CO↗

arXiv2019

Analysis of Nakamoto Consensus, Revisited

In the Bitcoin white paper, Nakamoto proposed a very simple Byzantine fault tolerant consensus algorithm that is also known as Nakamoto consensus. Despite its simplicity, some existing analysis of Nakamoto consensus appears to be long and involved. In this technical report, we aim to make such analysis simple and transparent so that we can teach senior undergraduate students and graduate students in our institutions. This report is largely based on a 3-hour tutorial given by one of the authors in June 2019.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2019

On the Triangle Clique Cover and $K_t$ Clique Cover Problems

An edge clique cover of a graph is a set of cliques that covers all edges of the graph. We generalize this concept to "$K_t$ clique cover", i.e. a set of cliques that covers all complete subgraphs on $t$ vertices of the graph, for every $t \geq 1$. In particular, we extend a classical result of Erdös, Goodman, and Pósa (1966) on the edge clique cover number ($t = 2$), also known as the intersection number, to the case $t = 3$. The upper bound is tight, with equality holding only for the Turán graph $T(n,3)$. We also extend an algorithm of Scheinerman and Trenk (1999) to solve a weighted version of the $K_t$ clique cover problem on a superclass of chordal graphs. We also prove that the $K_t$ clique cover problem is NP-hard.

math.CO↗

arXiv2019

Access Balancing in Storage Systems by Labeling Partial Steiner Systems

Storage architectures ranging from minimum bandwidth regenerating encoded distributed storage systems to declustered-parity RAIDs can be designed using dense partial Steiner systems in order to support fast reads, writes, and recovery of failed storage units. In order to ensure good performance, popularities of the data items should be taken into account and the frequencies of accesses to the storage units made as uniform as possible. A proposed combinatorial model ranks items by popularity and assigns data items to elements in a dense partial Steiner system so that the sums of ranks of the elements in each block are as equal as possible. By developing necessary conditions in terms of independent sets, we demonstrate that certain Steiner systems must have a much larger difference between the largest and smallest block sums than is dictated by an elementary lower bound. In contrast, we also show that certain dense partial $S(t, t+1, v)$ designs can be labeled to realize the elementary lower bound. Furthermore, we prove that for every admissible order $v$, there is a Steiner triple system $(S(2, 3, v))$ whose largest difference in block sums is within an additive constant of the lower bound.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2019

Locality in Index Coding for Large Min-Rank

An index code is said to be locally decodable if each receiver can decode its demand using its side information and by querying only a subset of the transmitted codeword symbols instead of observing the entire codeword. Local decodability can be a beneficial feature in some communication scenarios, such as when the receivers can afford to listen to only a part of the transmissions because of limited availability of power. The locality of an index code is the ratio of the maximum number of codeword symbols queried by a receiver to the message length. In this paper we analyze the optimum locality of linear codes for the family of index coding problems whose min-rank is one less than the number of receivers in the network. We first derive the optimal trade-off between the index coding rate and locality with vector linear coding when the side information graph is a directed cycle. We then provide the optimal trade-off achieved by scalar linear coding for a larger family of problems, viz., problems where the min-rank is only one less than the number of receivers. While the arguments used for achievability are based on known coding techniques, the converse arguments rely on new results on the structure of locally decodable index codes.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2018

On the I/O Costs of Some Repair Schemes for Full-Length Reed-Solomon Codes

Network transfer and disk read are the most time consuming operations in the repair process for node failures in erasure-code-based distributed storage systems. Recent developments on Reed-Solomon codes, the most widely used erasure codes in practical storage systems, have shown that efficient repair schemes specifically tailored to these codes can significantly reduce the network bandwidth spent to recover single failures. However, the I/O cost, that is, the number of disk reads performed in these repair schemes remains largely unknown. We take the first step to address this gap in the literature by investigating the I/O costs of some existing repair schemes for full-length Reed-Solomon codes.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2017

Optimal Repair Schemes for Some Families of Full-Length Reed-Solomon Codes

Reed-Solomon codes have found many applications in practical storage systems, but were until recently considered unsuitable for distributed storage applications due to the widely-held belief that they have poor repair bandwidth. The work of Guruswami and Wootters (STOC'16) has shown that one can actually perform bandwidth-efficient linear repair with Reed-Solomon codes: When the codes are over the field $\mathbb{F}_{q^t}$ and the number of parities $r \geq q^s$, where $(t-s)$ divides $t$, there exists a linear scheme that achieves a repair bandwidth of $(n-1)(t-s)\log_2 q$ bits. We extend this result by showing the existence of such a linear repair scheme for every $1 \leq s < t$. Moreover, our new schemes are optimal among all linear repair schemes for Reed-Solomon codes when $n = q^t$ and $r = q^s$. Additionally, we improve the lower bound on the repair bandwidth for Reed-Solomon codes, also established in the work of Guruswami and Wootters.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2017

Repairing Reed-Solomon Codes With Two Erasures

Despite their exceptional error-correcting properties, Reed-Solomon (RS) codes have been overlooked in distributed storage applications due to the common belief that they have poor repair bandwidth: A naive repair approach would require the whole file to be reconstructed in order to recover a single erased codeword symbol. In a recent work, Guruswami and Wootters (STOC'16) proposed a single-erasure repair method for RS codes that achieves the optimal repair bandwidth amongst all linear encoding schemes. We extend their trace collection technique to cope with two erasures.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2017

Motif Clustering and Overlapping Clustering for Social Network Analysis

Motivated by applications in social network community analysis, we introduce a new clustering paradigm termed motif clustering. Unlike classical clustering, motif clustering aims to minimize the number of clustering errors associated with both edges and certain higher order graph structures (motifs) that represent "atomic units" of social organizations. Our contributions are two-fold: We first introduce motif correlation clustering, in which the goal is to agnostically partition the vertices of a weighted complete graph so that certain predetermined "important" social subgraphs mostly lie within the same cluster, while "less relevant" social subgraphs are allowed to lie across clusters. We then proceed to introduce the notion of motif covers, in which the goal is to cover the vertices of motifs via the smallest number of (near) cliques in the graph. Motif cover algorithms provide a natural solution for overlapping clustering and they also play an important role in latent feature inference of networks. For both motif correlation clustering and its extension introduced via the covering problem, we provide hardness results, algorithmic solutions and community detection results for two well-studied social networks.

cs.SI↗