Hybrid Random/Deterministic Parallel Algorithms for Nonconvex Big Data Optimization

Abstract: We propose a decomposition framework for the parallel optimization of the sum of a differentiable {(possibly nonconvex)} function and a nonsmooth (possibly nonseparable), convex one. The latter term is usually employed to enforce structure in the solution, typically sparsity. The main contribution of this work is a novel \emph{parallel, hybrid random/deterministic} decomposition scheme wherein, at each iteration, a subset of (block) variables is updated at the same time by minimizing local convex approximations of the original nonconvex function. To tackle with huge-scale problems, the (block) variables to be updated are chosen according to a \emph{mixed random and deterministic} procedure, which captures the advantages of both pure deterministic and random update-based schemes. Almost sure convergence of the proposed scheme is established. Numerical results show that on huge-scale problems the proposed hybrid random/deterministic algorithm outperforms both random and deterministic schemes.