Title
Fully-Asynchronous Distributed Metropolis Sampler with Optimal Speedup.
Abstract
Metropolis-Hastings algorithm is a fundamental Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method for sampling and inference. With the advent of Big Data, distributed and parallel variants of MCMC methods are attracting increased attention. In this paper, we give a distributed algorithm that can correctly simulate sequential single-site Metropolis chains without any bias in a fully asynchronous message-passing model. Furthermore, if a natural Lipschitz condition is satisfied by the Metropolis filters, our algorithm can simulate $N$-step Metropolis chains within $O(N/n+log n)$ rounds of asynchronous communications, where $n$ is the number of variables. For sequential single-site dynamics, whose mixing requires $Omega(nlog n)$ steps, this achieves an optimal linear speedup. For several well-studied important graphical models, including proper graph coloring, hardcore model, and Ising model, the condition for linear speedup is weaker than the respective uniqueness (mixing) conditions. The novel idea in our algorithm is to resolve updates in advance: the local Metropolis filters can be executed correctly before the full information about neighboring spins is available. This achieves optimal parallelism of Metropolis processes without introducing any bias.
Year
Venue
DocType
2019
arXiv: Data Structures and Algorithms
Journal
Volume
Citations 
PageRank 
abs/1904.00943
0
0.34
References 
Authors
0
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Weiming Feng1104.97
Thomas P. Hayes265954.21
Yitong Yin321323.42