# Annealing for Distributed Global Optimization

The paper proves convergence to global optima for a class of distributed algorithms for nonconvex optimization in network-based multi-agent settings. Agents are permitted to communicate over a time-varying undirected graph. Each agent is assumed to possess a local objective function (assumed to be smooth, but possibly nonconvex). The paper considers algorithms for optimizing the sum function. A distributed algorithm of the consensus+innovations type is proposed which relies on first-order information at the agent level. Under appropriate conditions on network connectivity and the cost objective, convergence to the set of global optima is achieved by an annealing-type approach, with decaying Gaussian noise independently added into each agent's update step. It is shown that the proposed algorithm converges in probability to the set of global minima of the sum function.

## Authors

• 11 publications
• 39 publications
• 219 publications
• 39 publications
• ### Distributed Global Optimization by Annealing

The paper considers a distributed algorithm for global minimization of a...
07/20/2019 ∙ by Brian Swenson, et al. ∙ 0

• ### Clustering with Distributed Data

We consider K-means clustering in networked environments (e.g., internet...
01/01/2019 ∙ by Soummya Kar, et al. ∙ 0

The paper considers distributed gradient flow (DGF) for multi-agent nonc...
08/12/2020 ∙ by Brian Swenson, et al. ∙ 0

• ### Gradient-Free Multi-Agent Nonconvex Nonsmooth Optimization

In this paper, we consider the problem of minimizing the sum of nonconve...
04/09/2019 ∙ by Davood Hajinezhad, et al. ∙ 0

• ### A Convergence Theorem for the Graph Shift-type Algorithms

Graph Shift (GS) algorithms are recently focused as a promising approach...
06/13/2013 ∙ by Xuhui Fan, et al. ∙ 0

• ### Regularized Diffusion Adaptation via Conjugate Smoothing

The purpose of this work is to develop and study a distributed strategy ...
09/20/2019 ∙ by Stefan Vlaski, et al. ∙ 5

• ### Distributed Big-Data Optimization via Block-Iterative Gradient Tracking

We study distributed big-data nonconvex optimization in multi-agent netw...
08/22/2018 ∙ by Ivano Notarnicola, et al. ∙ 0

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## I Introduction

In this paper we consider a class of algorithms for nonconvex optimization in distributed multi-agent systems and prove convergence to the set of global optima. Recent years have seen a surge in research interest in nonconvex optimization, motivated, to a large degree, by emerging applications in machine learning and artificial intelligence. The majority of research in this area has focused on centralized computing frameworks in which memory and processing resources are either shared or coordinated by a central mechanism

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9].

With the advent of the internet of things (IoT) and low-latency 5G communication networks, there is a growing trend towards storing and processing data at the “edge” of the network (e.g., directly on IoT devices) rather than processing data in the cloud. This necessitates algorithms that are able to operate robustly in adhoc networked environments without centralized coordination. Beyond applications in IoT, distributed algorithms for non-convex optimization also play an important role in other domains, including power systems [10], sensor networks [11], unmanned aerial vehicles [12], and wireless communications [13].

This paper considers the following distributed computation framework: A group of agents (or nodes) communicates over a (possibly random, possibly sparse) undirected communication graph . Each agent has a local objective function . We are interested in distributed algorithms that optimize the sum function

 U(x)=1NN∑n=1Un(x) (1)

using only local neighborhood information exchange between agents and without any centralized coordination.

As an example, in the context of distributed risk minimization or probably approximately correct (PAC) learning, e.g., [14], the ’s may correspond to (expected) risk

 Un(θ)=EDn[ln(θ,zn)],

where

is the local loss function at agent

and is the local data distribution. The agents are interested in learning a common “hypothesis,” parameterized by , using their collective data.

Distributed optimization algorithms have been studied extensively when the objective functions are convex [15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20]. Not so when the objective is non-convex. The majority of current work in this area focuses on demonstrating convergence of distributed algorithms to critical points of (not necessarily to minima, local or global).

This motivates us to consider a class of distributed algorithms for computing the global optima of (1). Our algorithms take the form:

 xn(t+1) = xn(t)−βt∑l∈Ωn(t)(xn(t)−xl(t)) (2) −αt(∇Un(xn(t))+ζn(t))+γtwn(t), (3)

, where is the state of agent at iteration , denotes the set of agents neighboring agent at time (per the communication graph), and are sequences of decaying weight parameters, is a sequence of decaying annealing weights, (t) is a

-dimensional random variable (representing gradient noise), and

is a -dimensional Gaussian noise (introduced for annealing). The algorithm is distributed since in (2) each agent only knows its local function and accesses information on the state of neighboring agents.

Algorithm (2) may be viewed as a distributed consensus + innovations algorithm [21]. The algorithm consists of the consensus term, , that encourages agreement among agents, and the innovation term, , that encourages each agent to follow the gradient descent direction of their local objective function (with being zero-mean gradient noise). Finally, the term is an annealing term that injects decaying Gaussian noise into the dynamics to destabilize local minima and saddle points. By appropriately controlling the decay rates of the parameter sequences, one can balance the various objectives of reaching consensus among agents, reaching a critical point of (1), and destabilizing local minima and saddle points (see Assumption 6).

Our main contribution is the following: We show that, under appropriate assumptions (outlined below), the distributed algorithm (2) converges in probability to the set of global minima of (1). More precisely, it will be shown that (i) agents reach consensus, almost surely (a.s.), i.e., for each , a.s., and (ii) for each agent , converges in probability to the set of global minima of . A precise statement of the main result is given in Theorem 2 at the end of Section IV.

Theorem 2 is proved under Assumptions 111. Assumptions 12 and 711 concern the agents’ objective functions, Assumption 3 concerns the time-varying communication graph, Assumptions 45 concern the gradient annealing noise, and Assumption 6 concerns the weight parameter sequences.

Related Work. Work on distributed optimization with convex objectives has been studied extensively; for an overview of the expansive literature in this field we refer readers to [15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20] and references therein.

The topic of distributed algorithms for non-convex optimization is a subject of more recent research focus. We briefly summarize related contributions here. Reference [13] considers an algorithm for nonconvex optimization (possibly constrained) over an undirected communication graph and shows convergence to KKT points. Relevant applications to wireless adhoc networks are discussed. Reference [22] considers a distributed primal dual algorithm for nonconvex optimization. The primal dual algorithm solves an approximation to the original nonconvex problem. Reference [23] analyzes the alternating direction penalty method and method of multipliers in nonconvex problems and demonstrates convergence to primal feasible points under mild assumptions. Reference [24] considers a push-sum algorithm for distributed nonconvex optimization on time-varying directed graphs and demonstrates convergence to first-order stationary points. [25] considers a distributed algorithm for nonconvex optimization with smooth objective and possibly non-smooth regularizer and demonstrates convergence to stationary solutions. Our work differs from these primarily in that we study distributed algorithms for global optimization of a nonconvex function.

The key feature of this approach is the incorporation of decaying Gaussian noise that allows the algorithm to escape local minima. Such techniques were explored in [8] and later studied and successfully applied in various centralized settings; e.g., [26, 27, 28, 29, 30] and references therein. On the other hand, consensus + innovations techniques, such as those used in [21, 31], are used in distributed settings. In this paper we prove global optimal convergence for consensus + innovations techniques, with an appropriate annealing schedule, in nonconvex optimization. This results in a distributed equivalent of the centralized result in [8].

As noted in [32], the analysis techniques developed to study consensus + innovations algorithms contributes to the general theory of mixed-time-scale stochastic approximation (SA) algorithms, e.g., [33]. In such algorithms, the right-hand side of the stochastic approximation difference equation contains two potentials decaying at different rates. The work [8] studies mixed-time scale SA algorithms in the context of simulated annealing. In [8], the term that serves a role analogous to our innovations potential is assumed to converge asymptotically to a Martingale difference process. A key element of our analysis here is to characterize the rate at which the innovation potential converges to a Martingale difference sequence in order to apply the results of [8].

Organization. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section I-A introduces relevant notation. Section II formally introduces our distributed algorithm. Section III presents the assumptions used in our main result and some intermediate results, and it reviews a classical result in global optimization (Theorem 1) that will be used in the proof of our main result. Section IV proves the main result (Theorem 2).

### I-a Notation

The set of reals is denoted by , whereas denotes the non-negative reals. For , we will use the notations and to denote the maximum and minimum of and respectively. We denote the -dimensional Euclidean space by . The set of real matrices is denoted by . The identity matrix is denoted by , while and

denote respectively the column vector of ones and zeros in

. Often the symbol is used to denote the zero matrix, the dimensions being clear from the context. The operator applied to a vector denotes the standard Euclidean norm, while applied to matrices it denotes the induced norm, which is equivalent to the matrix spectral radius for symmetric matrices. The notation is used for the Kronecker product of two matrices and . We say that a function is of class , , if is -times continuously differentiable.

Given a set of elements in belonging to some Euclidean space, we let denote the vector stacking these elements. To simplify notation, we sometimes suppress the interior brackets when the meaning is clear.

We assume there exists a rich enough probability space to carry out the constructions of the random objects defined in the paper. Unless stated otherwise, all (in)equalities involving random objects are to be interpreted almost surely (a.s.). We denote by and probability and expectation respectively. Given a measure on and a (measurable) function , we let

 π(f) ˙=∫fdπ, (4)

whenever the integral exists. For a stochastic process and a function , we let

 Et0,z0[f(Zt)] ˙= E[f(Zt)|Zt0=z0]. (5)

Spectral graph theory: The inter-agent communication topology may be described by an undirected graph , with and  the set of agents (nodes) and communication links (edges), respectively. The unordered pair if there exists an edge between nodes  and . We consider simple graphs, i.e., graphs devoid of self-loops and multiple edges. A graph is connected if there exists a path111A path between nodes and of length is a sequence of vertices, such that ., between each pair of nodes. The neighborhood of node  is

 Ωn={l∈V|(n,l)∈E}. (6)

Node  has degree (the number of edges with  as one end point). The structure of the graph can be described by the symmetric adjacency matrix, , , if , , otherwise. Let the degree matrix be the diagonal matrix . The positive semidefinite matrix

is the graph Laplacian matrix. The eigenvalues of

can be ordered as

, the eigenvector corresponding to

being . The multiplicity of the zero eigenvalue equals the number of connected components of the network; for a connected graph, . This second eigenvalue is the algebraic connectivity or the Fiedler value of the network; see [34] for detailed treatment of graphs and their spectral theory.

## Ii Algorithm

Consider agents connected over a time-varying graph, with denoting the graph Laplacian at time . Let , denote the objective function of agent . Let be as defined in (1).

The agents update their states in a distributed fashion according to (2) for all with deterministic initial conditions , . In (2), denotes gradient noise and denotes a standard normal vector (introduced for annealing). In vector form, the update in (2) may be written as:

 xt+1= xt −βt(Lt⊗Id)xt (7) −αt(∇¯¯¯¯U(xt)+ζt)+γtwt, (8)

where , , , , and denotes the (stochastic) undirected graph Laplacian.

###### Remark 1.

In empirical risk minimization, agents optimize an empirical risk function using collected data, rather than optimizing the expected risk. In such problems, it is common to use stochastic gradient descent (SGD) techniques that mitigate computational burden by handling the data in batches. We note that our framework readily handles such SGD techniques as the

term can model independent gradient noise.

## Iii Intermediate Results

This section presents some intermediate results. In Section III-A, we begin by presenting several technical lemmas. Subsequently, in Section III-B we will use these technical lemmas to prove that the algorithm (7) obtains asymptotic consensus (see Lemma 4). Finally, in Section III-C, we briefly review classical results in global optimization that will be used in the proof of our main result.

### Iii-a Technical Results

We begin by making the following assumptions.

###### Assumption 1.

The functions are with Lipschitz continuous gradients, i.e., there exists such that

 ∥∇Un(x)−∇Un(´x)∥≤L∥x−´x∥ (9)

for all .

###### Assumption 2.

The functions satisfy the following bounded gradient-dissimilarity condition:

 supx∈Rd∥∇Un(x)−∇U(x)∥<∞,   ∀n. (10)

Denote by the natural filtration corresponding to the update process (2), i.e., for all , the -algebra is given by

 Ht=σ(x0,L0,⋯,Lt−1,ζ0,⋯,ζt−1,w0,⋯,wt−1). (11)
###### Assumption 3.

The -adapted sequence of undirected graph Laplacians are independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.), with being independent of for each , and are connected in the mean, i.e., where .

###### Assumption 4.

The sequence is -adapted and there exists a constant such that

 E[ζt | Ht]=0  and  E[∥ζt∥2 | Ht]

for all .

###### Assumption 5.

For each , the sequence is a sequence of i.i.d. -dimensional standard Gaussian vectors with covariance and with being independent of for all . Further, the sequences and are mutually independent for each pair with .

###### Assumption 6.

The sequences , , and satisfy

 αt=cαt,  βt=cβtτβ,  γt=cγt1/2√loglogt,   for t large, (13)

where and .

The following lemma characterizes the decay rate of scaled gradient noise.

###### Lemma 1.

Let Assumption 4 hold. Then, for every , we have that a.s. as .

###### Proof.

Fix and note that, by Assumption 4,

 P((t+1)−1/2−δ∥ζt∥>ε) ≤1ε2(t+1)1+2δE[∥ζ∥2] (14) ≤C1ε2(t+1)1+2δ. (15)

Since , the term on the R.H.S. of (15) is summable, and by the Borel-Cantelli lemma we may conclude that

 P((t+1)−1/2−δ∥ζt∥>ε i.o.)=0, (16)

where i.o. means infinitely often. Since is arbitrary, the desired assertion follows. ∎

The following two technical results from [31] will be useful (see also [21]).

###### Lemma 2 (Lemma 4.3 in [31]).

Let be an valued adapted process that satisfies

 zt+1≤(1−r1(t))zt+r2(t)Vt(1+Jt). (17)

In the above, is an adapted process, such that for all , satisfies and

 a1(t+1)δ1≤E[r1(t) | Ht]≤1 (18)

with and . The sequence is deterministic, valued and satisfies with and . Further, let and be valued adapted processes with a.s. The process is i.i.d. with independent of for each

and satisfies the moment condition

for some and a constant . Then, for every such that

 0≤δ0<δ2−δ1−12+ε1, (19)

we have a.s. as .

###### Remark 2.

Note that Lemma 4.3 in [31] assumes above is adapted, but the proof in [31] uses a pathwise analysis and can be readily adjusted to the case of adapted .

In , denote by the consensus subspace,

 C˙={z∈RNd : z=1N⊗a for some a∈Rd}, (20)

and denote by its orthogonal subspace in .

###### Lemma 3 (Lemma 4.4 in [31]).

Let be an valued adapted process such that for all . Also, let be an i.i.d. sequence of Laplacian matrices as in Assumption 3 that satisfies

 =λ2(E[Lt])=λ2(¯¯¯¯L)>0, (21)

with being adapted and independent of for all . Then there exists a measurable adapted valued process (depending on and ) and a constant , such that a.s. and

 ∥(INd−βtLt⊗Id)zt∥≤(1−rt)∥zt∥ (22)

with

 E[rt | Ht]≥cr(t+1)τβ  a.s. (23)

for all large enough, where the weight sequence and are defined in Assumption 6.

See [31] for a detailed discussion of the necessity of the various technicalities involved in the statement of Lemma 3.

### Iii-B Consensus

The following lemma shows that, a.s., the algorithm (7) obtains consensus asymptotically.

###### Lemma 4 (Convergence to Consensus Subspace).

Let Assumptions 1-6 hold. Let satisfy (7) with arbitrary initial condition. Then, for every , we have that

 P(limt→∞(t+1)τ∥∥xn(t)−¯¯¯xt∥∥=0)=1,   ∀n, (24)

where is the network-averaged process, .

###### Proof.

Noting that (by the properties of the undirected Laplacian), we have by (7),

 ¯¯¯xt+1=¯¯¯xt−αt(1NN∑n=1∇Un(xn(t))+¯¯¯ζt)+γt¯¯¯¯¯wt, (25)

where

 ¯¯¯ζt=1NN∑n=1ζn(t),  and  ¯¯¯¯¯wt=1NN∑n=1wn(t). (26)

Denote by the process, , for all , and note that

 PNd˘xt=0,  ∀t, (27)

since , where recall is the orthogonal complement of the consensus subspace (see (20)) and .

By (7) and (25) we have

 ˘xt+1 =(INd−βt(Lt⊗Id))˘xt −αt⎡⎢ ⎢ ⎢ ⎢ ⎢ ⎢ ⎢ ⎢ ⎢ ⎢⎣∇U1(x1(t))−1N∑Nl=1∇Ul(xl(t))∇U2(x2(t))−1N∑Nl=1∇Ul(xl(t))⋮⋮∇UN(xN(t))−1N∑Nl=1∇Ul(xl(t))⎤⎥ ⎥ ⎥ ⎥ ⎥ ⎥ ⎥ ⎥ ⎥ ⎥⎦T1 (28) −αt(ζt−1N⊗¯¯¯ζt)T2+γt(wt−1N⊗¯¯¯¯¯wt)T3 (29)

for all . (For convenience, we suppress the time index on the terms.) Now, consider the -th component of the term ,

 Tn1≐∇Un(xn(t))−1NN∑l=1∇Ul(xl(t)), (30)

and note that may be decomposed as

 Tn1 =(∇Un(xn(t))−∇Un(¯¯¯xt)) (31) +(∇Un(¯¯¯xt)−1NN∑l=1∇Ul(¯¯¯xt)) (32) +(1NN∑l=1∇Ul(¯¯¯xt)−1NN∑l=1∇Ul(xl(t))). (33)

For the second term on the R.H.S. of (31), note that, by Assumption 2, there exists a constant such that

 ∥∥ ∥∥∇Un(¯¯¯xt)−1NN∑l=1∇Ul(¯¯¯xt)∥∥ ∥∥=∥∥∇Un(¯¯¯xt)−∇U(¯¯¯xt)∥∥≤c1. (34)

Finally, by the Lipschitz continuity of the gradients (see Assumption 1), we have, for a constant large enough,

 ∥∥Tn1∥∥≤c1+c2N∑l=1∥∥xl(t)−¯¯¯xt∥∥. (35)

Hence, there exist constants such that

 (36)

For the term in (28), consider arbitrarily small. Consider the process , defined as for all , and note that by Lemma 1 we have as a.s. Since for all , we have (see Assumption 6)

 ∥αtT2∥=αt(t+1)1/2+δRt≤2cα(t+1)1/2−δRt,  for t large. (37)

Similarly, note that,

 ∥γtT3∥ ≤2cγ∥T3∥(t+1)1/2√loglogt (38) ≤2cγ(t+1)1/2−δ∥T3∥,  for t large. (39)

Noting that has moments of all order (by the Gaussianity of the ’s), by (37)-(38) we conclude that there exist -valued -adapted processes and such that

 ∥αtT2∥+∥γtT3∥≤1(t+1)1/2−δVt(1+Jt),  for t % large, (40)

with being bounded a.s. and possessing moments of all orders.

Since for all , by Lemma 3 there exists a adapted valued process and a constant such that a.s. and

 ∥INd−βt(Lt⊗Id)˘xt∥≤(1−rt)∥˘xt∥ (41)

with

 E[rt | Ht]≥c5(t+1)τβ  a.s. (42)

for all large enough.

Thus, by (28), (36), (40), and (41) we obtain

 ∥˘xt+1∥≤ (1−rt)∥˘xt∥ (43) +αtc3+αt∥˘xt∥+1(t+1)1/2−δVt(1+Jt) (44)

for large. Denote by the process given by, for all , and note that, since , by (42) there exists a constant such that

 E[¯¯¯rt | Ht]≥c6(t+1)τβ  a.s. (45)

for all large enough. Noting that for all large, by (43) we have

 ∥˘xt+1∥≤(1−¯¯¯rt)∥˘xt∥+c7(t+1)1/2−δVt(1+Jt) (46)

for large and a constant sufficiently large. By (45) and the above development, the recursion in (46) clearly falls under the purview of Lemma 2, and we conclude that (by taking and in Lemma 2) for all and such that

 0≤τ<12−δ−τβ−12+ε1, (47)

we have a.s. as . By taking (since has moments of all orders) and , we conclude that a.s. as for all . ∎

### Iii-C Classical Results: Recursive Algorithms for Global Optimization

We will now briefly review classical results on global optimization from [8] that will be used in the proof of our main result.

Consider the following stochastic recursion in :

 zt+1=zt−at(∇U(zt)+ξt)+btwt,   t≥0, (48)

where , is a sequence of -valued random variables, is a sequence of independent -dimensional Gaussian random variables with mean zero and covariance , and

 at=At,  b2t=Btloglogt,   for t large, (49)

where are constants.

Consider the following assumptions on , the gradient field , and noise :

###### Assumption 7.

is a function such that

1. ,

2. and as ,

3. .

We note that Within the context of PAC learning, the assumption (i) above corresponds to the “realizability” assumption, i.e., there exists a true (but unknown) hypothesis that accurately represents that data.

###### Assumption 8.

For let

 dπε(x)=1Zεexp(−2U(x)ε2)dx,
 Zε=∫exp(−2U(x)ε2)dx.

is such that has a weak limit as .

We note that is constructed so as to place mass 1 on the set of global minima of . A discussion of simple conditions ensuring the existence of such a can be found in [35].

, .

###### Assumption 11.

Let be the natural filtration generated by (48); that is, , is given by

 Gt=σ({x0,ξ1,…,ξt−1,w1,…,wt−1})
###### Assumption 12.

There exists such that

 E(∥ξt∥2|Gt)≤C1aγ1t,∥E(ξt|Gt)∥≤C1aγ2t  a.s.

with and .

Note that, in contrast to Assumption 4, Assumption 12 assumes the conditional mean may be non-zero (but decaying).

Finally, let be the constant as defined after (2.3) in [8].

The following result on the convergence of the stochastic process (48) was obtained in [8].

###### Theorem 1 (Theorem 4 in [8]).

Let be given by (48). Suppose that Assumptions 712 hold and assume and in (49) satisfy . Then, for any bounded continuous function , we have that

 limt→∞E0,z0[f(zt)]=π(f). (50)

## Iv Main Results

We will now prove the main result of the paper. We shall proceed as follows. We will first study the behavior of the -valued networked averaged process

 ¯¯¯xt=1NN∑n=1xn(t),t≥1. (51)

Using Theorem 1, we will show that converges to the set of global minima of (see Lemma 5). After proving Lemma 5 we will present Theorem 2, which is the main result of the paper. Theorem 2 follows as a straightforward consequence of Lemmas 4 and 5.

Note that, taking the average on both sides of (2) we obtain,

 ¯¯¯xt+1=¯¯¯xt−αt(∇U(¯¯¯xt)+¯¯¯ζt+¯¯¯¯Rt)+γt¯¯¯¯¯wt, (52)

where

 ¯¯¯¯Rt=1NN∑n=1(∇Un(xn(t))−∇Un(¯¯¯xt)), (53)

and and are given in (26).

The following lemma shows that the networked-averaged process converges to the set of global minima of .

###### Lemma 5.

Let satisfy the recursion (7) and let be given by (51), with initial condition . Let Assumptions 36 hold and Assume satisfies Assumptions 12 and 711. Further, suppose that and in Assumption 6 satisfy, , where is defined after Assumption 12. Then, for any bounded continuous function , we have that

 limt→∞E0,x0[f(¯¯¯xt)]=π(f). (54)
###### Proof.

The result will be proven by showing that the in (52) falls under the purview of Theorem 1, and, in particular, that Assumption 12 is satisfied. To do this, the key technical issue lies in handling the process . Specifically, we must restate the a.s. convergence obtained in Lemma 4 in terms of conditional expectations as required by Assumption 12.

Fix and let be arbitrary. Since, by Lemma 4, as a.s. for all , by Egorov’s theorem there exists a constant such that

 P(supt≥0tτ∥∥xn(t)−¯¯¯xt∥∥≤Rδ)>1−δ,  ∀n. (55)

Note that, by Assumption 1,

 P(supt≥0tτ∥∥xn(t)−¯¯¯xt∥∥≤Rδ)≤P(supt≥0tτ∥∥¯¯¯¯Rt∥∥≤LRδ). (56)

Now consider the -adapted process , given by

 ¯¯¯¯Rδt=⎧⎨⎩¯¯¯¯Rtif tτ∥¯¯¯¯Rt∥≤LRδLRδtτif tτ∥¯¯¯¯Rt∥>LRδ, (57)

for all . Note that, by construction,

 P(supt≥0tτ∥∥∥