Swarming for Faster Convergence in Stochastic Optimization
Abstract
We study a distributed framework for stochastic optimization which is inspired by models of collective motion found in nature (e.g., swarming) with mild communication requirements. Specifically, we analyze a scheme in which each one of independent threads, implements in a distributed and unsynchronized fashion, a stochastic gradient-descent algorithm which is perturbed by a swarming potential. Assuming the overhead caused by synchronization is not negligible, we show the swarming-based approach exhibits better performance than a centralized algorithm (based upon the average of observations) in terms of (real-time) convergence speed. We also derive an error bound that is monotone decreasing in network size and connectivity. We characterize the scheme's finite-time performances for both convex and non-convex objective functions.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1806.04207,
title = {Swarming for Faster Convergence in Stochastic Optimization},
author = {Shi Pu and Alfredo Garcia},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1806.04207},
year = {2018}
}