Distributed Primal-dual Optimization for Heterogeneous Multi-agent Systems

Abstract: Heterogeneous networks comprise agents with varying capabilities in terms of computation, storage, and communication. In such settings, it is crucial to factor in the operating characteristics in allowing agents to choose appropriate updating schemes, so as to better distribute computational tasks and utilize the network more efficiently. We consider the multi-agent optimization problem of cooperatively minimizing the sum of local strongly convex objectives. We propose an asynchronous distributed primal-dual protocol, which allows for the primal update steps to be agent-dependent (an agent can opt between first-order or Newton updates). Our analysis introduces a unifying framework for such hybrid optimization scheme and establishes global linear convergence in expectation, under strongly convex objectives and general agent activation schemes. Numerical experiments on real life datasets attest to the merits of the proposed algorithm.