Papers › DESTRESS: Computation-Optimal and Communication-Efficient Decentralized Nonconvex...

DESTRESS: Computation-Optimal and Communication-Efficient Decentralized Nonconvex Finite-Sum Optimization

4 Oct 2021arXiv:2110.01165archive 2025-07-28

Boyue Li, Zhize Li, Yuejie Chi

Emerging applications in multi-agent environments such as internet-of-things, networked sensing, autonomous systems and federated learning, call for decentralized algorithms for finite-sum optimizations that are resource-efficient in terms of both computation and communication. In this paper, we consider the prototypical setting where the agents work collaboratively to minimize the sum of local loss functions by only communicating with their neighbors over a predetermined network topology. We develop a new algorithm, called DEcentralized STochastic REcurSive gradient methodS (DESTRESS) for nonconvex finite-sum optimization, which matches the optimal incremental first-order oracle (IFO) complexity of centralized algorithms for finding first-order stationary points, while maintaining communication efficiency. Detailed theoretical and numerical comparisons corroborate that the resource efficiencies of DESTRESS improve upon prior decentralized algorithms over a wide range of parameter regimes. DESTRESS leverages several key algorithm design ideas including randomly activated stochastic recursive gradient updates with mini-batches for local computation, gradient tracking with extra mixing (i.e., multiple gossiping rounds) for per-iteration communication, together with careful choices of hyper-parameters and new analysis frameworks to provably achieve a desirable computation-communication trade-off.

PaperPDFCode

In Syntology Open this paper in Syntology's Atlas, the map of the papers in Syntology's graph and their citations.

Code

liboyue/Network-Distributed-Algorithm officialmentioned in papermentioned on GitHub report

Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.

Code Syntology ran Syntology

Not run by Syntology. Nothing on this page verifies that the listed code works.

Tasks

Federated Learning

Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28

No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.

Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections