Year: 2013
Type: preprint
Abstract: Communication costs, resulting from synchronization requirements during learning, can greatly slow down many parallel machine learning algorithms. In this paper, we present a parallel Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm in which subsets of data are processed independently, with very little communication. First, we arbitrarily partition data onto multiple machines. Then, on each machine, any classical MCMC method (e.g., Gibbs sampling) may be used to draw samples from a posterior distribution given the data subset. Finally, the samples from each machine are combined to form samples from the full posterior. This embarrassingly parallel algorithm allows each machine to act independently on a subset of the data (without communication) until the final combination stage. We prove that our algorithm generates asymptotically exact samples and empirically demonstrate its ability to parallelize burn-in and sampling in several models.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
DOI: 10.1184/r1/6475481
Authors: Neiswanger, Willie, Wang, Chong, Xing, Eric P
Institution: Carnegie Mellon University
Language: English
Subfield: Statistics and Probability
Field: Mathematics
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2145536610