An @math -vector MDS code is a @math -linear subspace of @math (for some field @math ) of dimension @math , such that any @math (vector) symbols of the codeword suffice to determine the remaining @math (vector) symbols. The length @math of each codeword symbol is called the sub-packetization of the code. Such a code is called minimum storage regenerating (MSR), if any single symbol of a codeword can be recovered by downloading @math field elements (which is known to be the least possible) from each of the other symbols. MSR codes are attractive for use in distributed storage systems, and by now a variety of ingenious constructions of MSR codes are available. However, they all suffer from exponentially large sub-packetization @math . Our main result is an almost tight lower bound showing that for an MSR code, one must have @math . Previously, a lower bound of @math , and a tight lower bound for a restricted class of "optimal access" MSR codes, were known. Our work settles a central open question concerning MSR codes that has received much attention. Further our proof is really short, hinging on one key definition that is somewhat inspired by Galois theory.
In summary, while there are several constructions of high rate MSR codes, they all incur large sub-packetization, which is undesirable as briefly explained earlier. This has been partially explained by lower bounds on @math in a few previous works. For the special case of optimal-access MSR codes, a lower bound of @math was shown in @cite_0 , and this was improved (when all-node repair is desired) to @math recently @cite_8 . Together with the above-mentioned constructions, we thus have matching upper and lower bounds on @math for the optimal-access case. This help-by-transfer setting is primarily combinatorial in nature, which is exploited heavily in these lower bounds.
@cite_0 @cite_8
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The first focus of the present paper, is on lower bounds on the sub-packetization level @math of an MSR code that is capable of carrying out repair in help-by-transfer fashion (also called optimal-access property). We prove here a lower bound on @math which is shown to be tight for the case @math by comparing with recent code constructions in the literature. We also extend our results to an @math MDS code over the vector alphabet. Our objective even here, is on lower bounds on the sub-packetization level @math of an MDS code that can carry out repair of any node in a subset of @math nodes, @math where each node is repaired (linear repair) by help-by-transfer with minimum repair bandwidth. We prove a lower bound on @math for the case of @math . This bound holds for any @math and is shown to be tight, again by comparing with recent code constructions in the literature. Also provided, are bounds for the case @math . We study the form of a vector MDS code having the property that we can repair failed nodes belonging to a fixed set of @math nodes with minimum repair bandwidth and in optimal-access fashion, and which achieve our lower bound on sub-packetization level @math . It turns out interestingly, that such a code must necessarily have a coupled-layer structure, similar to that of the Ye-Barg code. The first focus of the present paper, is on lower bounds on the sub-packetization level @math of an MSR code that is capable of carrying out repair in help-by-transfer fashion (also called optimal-access property). We prove here a lower bound on @math which is shown to be tight for the case @math by comparing with recent code constructions in the literature. We also extend our results to an @math MDS code over the vector alphabet. Our objective even here, is on lower bounds on the sub-packetization level @math of an MDS code that can carry out repair of any node in a subset of @math nodes, @math where each node is repaired (linear repair) by help-by-transfer with minimum repair bandwidth. We prove a lower bound on @math for the case of @math . This bound holds for any @math and is shown to be tight, again by comparing with recent code constructions in the literature. Also provided, are bounds for the case @math Q @math $ . It turns out interestingly, that such a code must necessarily have a coupled-layer structure, similar to that of the Ye-Barg code. We present a high-rate @math -MSR code with a sub-packetization level that is polynomial in the dimension @math of the code. While polynomial sub-packetization level was achieved earlier for vector MDS codes that repair systematic nodes optimally, no such MSR code construction is known. In the low-rate regime (i. e., rates less than one-half), MSR code constructions with a linear sub-packetization level are available. But in the high-rate regime (i. e., rates greater than one-half), the known MSR code constructions required a sub-packetization level that is exponential in @math . In the present paper, we construct an MSR code for @math with a fixed rate @math achieveing a sub-packetization level @math . The code allows help-by-transfer repair, i. e., no computations are needed at the helper nodes during repair of a failed node. An @math maximum distance separable (MDS) array code of length @math , dimension @math , and sub-packetization @math is formed of @math matrices over a finite field @math , with every column of the matrix stored on a separate node in the distributed storage system and viewed as a coordinate of the codeword. Repair of a failed node (recovery of one erased column) can be performed by accessing a set of @math surviving (helper) nodes. The code is said to have the optimal access property if the amount of data accessed at each of the helper nodes meets a lower bound on this quantity. For optimal-access MDS codes with @math , the sub-packetization @math satisfies the bound @math . In our previous work (IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, vol. 63, no. 4, 2017), for any @math and @math , we presented an explicit construction of optimal-access MDS codes with sub-packetization @math . In this paper, we take up the question of reducing the sub-packetization value @math to make it to approach the lower bound. We construct an explicit family of optimal-access codes with @math , which differs from the optimal value by at most a factor of @math . These codes can be constructed over any finite field @math as long as @math , and afford low-complexity encoding and decoding procedures. We also define a version of the repair problem that bridges the context of regenerating codes and codes with locality constraints (LRC codes), which we call group repair with optimal access . In this variation, we assume that the set of @math nodes is partitioned into @math repair groups of size @math , and require that the amount of accessed data for repair is the smallest possible whenever the @math helper nodes include all the other @math nodes from the same group as the failed node. For this problem, we construct a family of codes with the group optimal access property. These codes can be constructed over any field @math of size @math , and also afford low-complexity encoding and decoding procedures. Maximum distance separable (MDS) codes are optimal error-correcting codes in the sense that they provide the maximum failure tolerance for a given number of parity nodes. Suppose that an MDS code with @math information nodes and @math parity nodes is used to encode data in a distributed storage system. It is known that if @math out of the @math nodes are inaccessible and @math surviving (helper) nodes are used to recover the lost data, then we need to download at least @math fraction of the data stored in each of the helper nodes ( , 2010 and , 2013). If this lower bound is achieved for the repair of any @math erased nodes from any @math helper nodes, we say that the MDS code has the @math -optimal repair property. We study high-rate MDS array codes with the optimal repair property (also known as minimum storage regenerating codes, or MSR codes). Explicit constructions of such codes in the literature are only available for the cases where there are at most three parity nodes, and these existing constructions can only optimally repair a single node failure by accessing all the surviving nodes. In this paper, given any @math and @math , we present two explicit constructions of MDS array codes with the @math -optimal repair property for all @math and @math simultaneously. Codes in the first family can be constructed over any base field @math as long as @math , where @math . The encoding, decoding, repair of failed nodes, and update procedures of these codes all have low complexity. Codes in the second family have the optimal access property and can be constructed over any base field @math as long as @math . Moreover, both code families have the optimal error resilience capability when repairing failed nodes. We also construct several other related families of MDS codes with the optimal repair property. Regenerating codes for distributed storage have attracted much research interest in the past decade. Such codes trade the bandwidth needed to repair a failed node with the overall amount of data stored in the network. Minimum storage regenerating (MSR) codes are an important class of optimal regenerating codes that minimize (first) the amount of data stored per node and (then) the repair bandwidth. Specifically, an @math - @math MSR code @math over @math stores a file @math consisting of @math symbols over @math among @math nodes, each storing @math symbols, in such a way that: 1) the file @math can be recovered by downloading the content of any @math of the @math nodes and 2) the content of any failed node can be reconstructed by accessing any @math of the remaining @math nodes and downloading @math symbols from each of these nodes. In practice, the file @math is typically available in uncoded form on some @math of the @math nodes, known as systematic nodes , and the defining node-repair condition above can be relaxed to requiring the optimal repair bandwidth for systematic nodes only . Such codes are called systematic–repair MSR codes . Unfortunately, finite– @math constructions of @math MSR codes are known only for certain special cases: either low rate, namely @math , or high repair connectivity, namely @math . Our main result in this paper is a finite– @math construction of systematic-repair @math MSR codes for all possible values of parameters @math . We also introduce a generalized construction for @math MSR codes to achieve the optimal repair bandwidth for all values of @math simultaneously. We present a high-rate (n, k, d = n − 1)-MSR code with a sub-packetization level that is polynomial in the dimension k of the code. While polynomial sub-packetization level was achieved earlier for vector MDS codes that repair systematic nodes optimally, no such MSR code construction is known. In the low-rate regime (i. e., rates less than one-half), MSR code constructions with a linear sub-packetization level are available. But in the high-rate regime (i. e., rates greater than one-half), the known MSR code constructions required a sub-packetization level that is exponential in k. In the present paper, we construct an MSR code for d = n − 1 with a fixed rate equation, achieveing a sub-packetization level α = O(kt). The code allows help-by-transfer repair, i. e., no computations are needed at the helper nodes during repair of a failed node. Maximum distance separable (MDS) codes are optimal error-correcting codes in the sense that they provide the maximum failure-tolerance for a given number of parity nodes. Suppose that an MDS code with @math information nodes and @math parity nodes is used to encode data in a distributed storage system. It is known that if @math out of the @math nodes are inaccessible and @math surviving (helper) nodes are used to recover the lost data, then we need to download at least @math fraction of the data stored in each of the helper nodes (Dimakis et. al., 2010 and , 2013). If this lower bound is achieved for the repair of any @math erased nodes from any @math helper nodes, we say that the MDS code has the @math -optimal repair property. We study high-rate MDS array codes with the optimal repair property. Explicit constructions of such codes in the literature are only available for the cases where there are at most 3 parity nodes, and these existing constructions can only optimally repair a single node failure by accessing all the surviving nodes. In this paper, given any @math and @math , we present two explicit constructions of MDS array codes with the @math -optimal repair property for all @math and @math simultaneously. Codes in the first family can be constructed over any base field @math as long as @math where @math The encoding, decoding, repair of failed nodes, and update procedures of these codes all have low complexity. Codes in the second family have the optimal access property and can be constructed over any base field @math as long as @math Moreover, both code families have the optimal error resilience capability when repairing failed nodes. We also construct several other related families of MDS codes with the optimal repair property. This paper presents an explicit construction for an @math regenerating code over a field @math operating at the Minimum Storage Regeneration (MSR) point. The MSR code can be constructed to have rate @math as close to @math as desired, sub-packetization given by @math , for @math , field size no larger than @math and where all code symbols can be repaired with the same minimum data download. The construction modifies a prior construction by Sasidharan et. al. which required far larger field-size. A building block appearing in the construction is a scalar MDS code of block length @math . The code has a simple layered structure with coupling across layers, that allows both node repair and data recovery to be carried out by making multiple calls to a decoder for the scalar MDS code. While this work was carried out independently, there is considerable overlap with a prior construction by Ye and Barg. It is shown here that essentially the same architecture can be employed to construct MSR codes using vector binary MDS codes as building blocks in place of scalar MDS codes. The advantage here is that computations can now be carried out over a field of smaller size potentially even over the binary field as we demonstrate in an example. Further, we show how the construction can be extended to handle the case of @math under a mild restriction on the choice of helper nodes. In this paper, we revisit the problem of characterizing the secrecy capacity of minimum storage regenerating (MSR) codes under the passive @math -eavesdropper model, where the eavesdropper has access to data stored on @math nodes and the repair data for an additional @math nodes. We study it from the information-theoretic perspective. First, some general properties of MSR codes as well as a simple and generally applicable upper bound on secrecy capacity are given. Second, a new concept of stable MSR codes is introduced, where the stable property is shown to be closely linked with secrecy capacity. Finally, a comprehensive and explicit result on secrecy capacity in the linear MSR scenario is present, which generalizes all related works in the literature and also predicts certain results for some unexplored linear MSR codes. Repair locality is a desirable property for erasure codes in distributed storage systems. Recently, different structures of local repair groups have been proposed in the definitions of repair locality. In this paper, the concept of regenerating set is introduced to characterize the local repair groups. A definition of locality @math (i.e., locality @math with repair tolerance @math ) under the most general structure of regenerating sets is given. All previously studied locality turns out to be special cases of this definition. Furthermore, three representative concepts of locality proposed before are reinvestigated under the framework of regenerating sets, and their respective upper bounds on the minimum distance are reproved in a uniform and brief form. Additionally, a more precise distance bound is derived for the square code which is a class of linear codes with locality @math and high information rate, and an explicit code construction attaining the optimal distance bound is obtained. This paper considers the problem of variable-length coding over a discrete memoryless channel with noiseless feedback. This paper provides a stochastic control view of the problem whose solution is analyzed via a newly proposed symmetrized divergence, termed extrinsic Jensen–Shannon (EJS) divergence. It is shown that strictly positive lower bounds on EJS divergence provide nonasymptotic upper bounds on the expected code length. This paper presents strictly positive lower bounds on EJS divergence, and hence nonasymptotic upper bounds on the expected code length, for the following two coding schemes: 1) variable-length posterior matching and 2) MaxEJS coding scheme that is based on a greedy maximization of the EJS divergence. As an asymptotic corollary of the main results, this paper also provides a rate–reliability test. Variable-length coding schemes that satisfy the condition(s) of the test for parameters @math and @math are guaranteed to achieve a rate @math and an error exponent @math . The results are specialized for posterior matching and MaxEJS to obtain deterministic one-phase coding schemes achieving capacity and optimal error exponent. For the special case of symmetric binary-input channels, simpler deterministic schemes of optimal performance are proposed and analyzed. We present an information-theoretic approach to lower bound the oracle complexity of nonsmooth black box convex optimization, unifying previous lower bounding techniques by identifying a combinatorial problem, namely string guessing, as a single source of hardness. As a measure of complexity, we use distributional oracle complexity, which subsumes randomized oracle complexity as well as worst case oracle complexity. We obtain strong lower bounds on distributional oracle complexity for the box @math , as well as for the @math -ball for @math (for both low-scale and large-scale regimes), matching worst case upper bounds, and hence we close the gap between distributional complexity, and in particular, randomized complexity and worst case complexity. Furthermore, the bounds remain essentially the same for high-probability and bounded-error oracle complexity, and even for combination of the two, i.e., bounded-error high-probability oracle complexity. This considerably extends the applicability of known bounds. In this paper, we revisit the problem of finding the longest systematic-length @math for a linear minimum storage regenerating (MSR) code with optimal repair of only systematic part, for a given per-node storage capacity @math and an arbitrary number of parity nodes @math . We study the problem by following the geometric analysis of linear subspaces and operators. First, a simple quadratic bound is given, which implies that @math is the largest number of systematic nodes in the scenario. Second, an @math -based-log bound is derived, which is superior to the upper bound on log-base @math in the prior work. Finally, an explicit upper bound depending on the value of @math is introduced, which further extends the corresponding result in the literature. Regenerating codes and codes with locality are schemes recently proposed for a distributed storage network. While regenerating codes minimize the data downloaded for node repair, codes with locality minimize the number of nodes accessed during repair. In this paper, we provide some constructions of codes with locality, in which the local codes are regenerating codes, thereby combining the advantages of both classes of codes. The proposed constructions achieve an upper bound on minimum distance and are hence optimal. The constructions include both the cases when the local regenerating codes correspond to the MSR point as well as the MBR point on the storage repair-bandwidth tradeoff curve. We study a generalization of the setting of regenerating codes, motivated by applications to storage systems consisting of clusters of storage nodes. There are @math clusters in total, with @math nodes per cluster. A data file is coded and stored across the @math nodes, with each node storing @math symbols. For availability of data, we require that the file be retrievable by downloading the entire content from any subset of @math clusters. Nodes represent entities that can fail. We distinguish between intra-cluster and inter-cluster bandwidth (BW) costs during node repair. Node-repair in a cluster is accomplished by downloading @math symbols each from any set of @math other clusters, dubbed remote helper clusters, and also up to @math symbols each from any set of @math surviving nodes, dubbed local helper nodes, in the host cluster. We first identify the optimal trade-off between storage-overhead and inter-cluster repair-bandwidth under functional repair, and also present optimal exact-repair code constructions for a class of parameters. The new trade-off is strictly better than what is achievable via space-sharing existing coding solutions, whenever @math . We then obtain sharp lower bounds on the necessary intra-cluster repair BW to achieve optimal trade-off. Under functional repair, random linear network codes (RLNCs) simultaneously optimize usage of both inter- and intra-cluster repair BW; simulation results based on RLNCs suggest optimality of the bounds on intra-cluster repair-bandwidth. Our bounds reveal the interesting fact that, while it is beneficial to increase the number of local helper nodes @math in order to improve the storage-vs-inter-cluster-repair-BW trade-off, increasing @math not only increases intra-cluster BW in the host-cluster, but also increases the intra-cluster BW in the remote helper clusters. We also analyze resilience of the clustered storage system against passive eavesdropping by providing file-size bounds and optimal code constructions. This paper presents a construction for high-rate MDS codes that enable bandwidth-efficient repair of a single node. Such MDS codes are also referred to as the minimum storage regenerating (MSR) codes in the distributed storage literature. The construction presented in this paper generates MSR codes for all possible number of helper nodes d as d is a design parameter in the construction. Furthermore, the obtained MSR codes have polynomial sub-packetization (a.k.a. node size) α. The construction is built on the recent code proposed by [1], which works only for d = n — 1, i.e., where all the remaining nodes serve as the helper nodes for the bandwidth-efficient repair of a single node. The results of this paper broaden the set of parameters where the constructions of MSR codes were known earlier. In an index coding with side-information (ICSI) problem there is a sender with a set of independent messages @math and there are receivers @math , each identified with ( @math ), where @math is the set of messages wanted by receiver @math and @math is the set of messages known a priori to receiver @math . We call a ICSI problem to be single-prior if @math In addition, if @math it is called a single-uniprior problem and has been studied in detail by Ong, Ho and Lim OHL . Error Correcting index codes (ECIC) have been studied by Dau, Skachek and Chee DSC and lower and upper bounds on the optimal length of ECICs have been reported. In this paper we show that for single-prior ICSI problems the lower and upper bounds on the optimal ECICs coincide. This leads to construction of optimal length linear ECICs. In the distributed all-pairs shortest paths problem (APSP), every node in the weighted undirected distributed network (the CONGEST model) needs to know the distance from every other node using least number of communication rounds (typically called time complexity ). The problem admits @math -approximation @math -time algorithm and a nearly-tight @math lower bound [Nanongkai, STOC'14; Lenzen and Patt-Shamir PODC'15] @math , @math and @math hide polylogarithmic factors. Note that the lower bounds also hold even in the unweighted case and in the weighted case with polynomial approximation ratios LenzenP_podc13,HolzerW12,PelegRT12,Nanongkai-STOC14 . . For the exact case, Elkin [STOC'17] presented an @math time bound, which was later improved to @math [Huang, Nanongkai, Saranurak FOCS'17]. It was shown that any super-linear lower bound (in @math ) requires a new technique [Censor-Hillel, Khoury, Paz, DISC'17], but otherwise it remained widely open whether there exists a @math -time algorithm for the exact case, which would match the best possible approximation algorithm. This paper resolves this question positively: we present a randomized (Las Vegas) @math -time algorithm, matching the lower bound up to polylogarithmic factors. Like the previous @math bound, our result works for directed graphs with zero (and even negative) edge weights. In addition to the improved running time, our algorithm works in a more general setting than that required by the previous @math bound; in our setting (i) the communication is only along edge directions (as opposed to bidirectional), and (ii) edge weights are arbitrary (as opposed to integers in 1, 2, ... poly(n) ). ... Index Coding has received considerable attention recently motivated in part by real-world applications and in part by its connection to Network Coding. The basic setting of Index Coding encodes the problem input as an undirected graph and the fundamental parameter is the broadcast rate @math , the average communication cost per bit for sufficiently long messages (i.e. the non-linear vector capacity). Recent nontrivial bounds on @math were derived from the study of other Index Coding capacities (e.g. the scalar capacity @math ) by Bar- (2006), Lubetzky and Stav (2007) and (2008). However, these indirect bounds shed little light on the behavior of @math : there was no known polynomial-time algorithm for approximating @math in a general network to within a nontrivial (i.e. @math ) factor, and the exact value of @math remained unknown for any graph where Index Coding is nontrivial. Our main contribution is a direct information-theoretic analysis of the broadcast rate @math using linear programs, in contrast to previous approaches that compared @math with graph-theoretic parameters. This allows us to resolve the aforementioned two open questions. We provide a polynomial-time algorithm with a nontrivial approximation ratio for computing @math in a general network along with a polynomial-time decision procedure for recognizing instances with @math . In addition, we pinpoint @math precisely for various classes of graphs (e.g. for various Cayley graphs of cyclic groups) thereby simultaneously improving the previously known upper and lower bounds for these graphs. Via this approach we construct graphs where the difference between @math and its trivial lower bound is linear in the number of vertices and ones where @math is uniformly bounded while its upper bound derived from the naive encoding scheme is polynomially worse.