We provide a tight analysis which settles the round complexity of the well-studied parallel randomized greedy MIS algorithm, thus answering the main open question of Blelloch, Fineman, and Shun [SPAA'12]. The parallel distributed randomized greedy Maximal Independent Set (MIS) algorithm works as follows. An order of the vertices is chosen uniformly at random. Then, in each round, all vertices that appear before their neighbors in the order are added to the independent set and removed from the graph along with their neighbors. The main question of interest is the number of rounds it takes until the graph is empty. This algorithm has been studied since 1987, initiated by Coppersmith, Raghavan, and Tompa [FOCS'87], and the previously best known bounds were @math rounds in expectation for Erd o s-R ' e nyi random graphs by Calkin and Frieze [Random Struc. & Alg. '90] and @math rounds with high probability for general graphs by Blelloch, Fineman, and Shun [SPAA'12]. We prove a high probability upper bound of @math on the round complexity of this algorithm in general graphs, and that this bound is tight. This also shows that parallel randomized greedy MIS is as fast as the celebrated algorithm of Luby [STOC'85, JALG'86].
To overcome this problem of dependencies among different iterations, Blelloch, Fineman, and Shun @cite_7 ---inspired by an approach of @cite_21 and @cite_0 ---divide the algorithm into several phases. In each phase they only expose a of the remaining order and run the parallel algorithm on these vertices only (whilst still deleting a vertex in the suffix if it is adjacent to a vertex added to the MIS). This way, in each phase the order among the unprocessed (but possibly already deleted) vertices in the suffix remains random, leading to a sequence of independent" problems.
@cite_0 @cite_21 @cite_7
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The following three problems concerning random graphs can be solved in (log n)O(1) expected time using linearly many processors: (1) finding the lexicographically first maximal independent set, (2) coloring the vertices using a number of colors that is almost surely within twice the chromatic number, and (3) finding a Hamiltonian circuit. The greedy sequential algorithm for maximal independent set (MIS) loops over the vertices in an arbitrary order adding a vertex to the resulting set if and only if no previous neighboring vertex has been added. In this loop, as in many sequential loops, each iterate will only depend on a subset of the previous iterates (i.e. knowing that any one of a vertex's previous neighbors is in the MIS, or knowing that it has no previous neighbors, is sufficient to decide its fate one way or the other). This leads to a dependence structure among the iterates. If this structure is shallow then running the iterates in parallel while respecting the dependencies can lead to an efficient parallel implementation mimicking the sequential algorithm. In this paper, we show that for any graph, and for a random ordering of the vertices, the dependence length of the sequential greedy MIS algorithm is polylogarithmic (O(log^2 n) with high probability). Our results extend previous results that show polylogarithmic bounds only for random graphs. We show similar results for greedy maximal matching (MM). For both problems we describe simple linear-work parallel algorithms based on the approach. The algorithms allow for a smooth tradeoff between more parallelism and reduced work, but always return the same result as the sequential greedy algorithms. We present experimental results that demonstrate efficiency and the tradeoff between work and parallelism.