A note on the sufficient initial condition ensuring the convergence of directly extended 3-block ADMM for special semidefinite programming

ABSTRACT

In this note, we consider three types of problems, H-weighted nearest correlation matrix problem and two types of important doubly non-negative semidefinite programming, derived from the binary integer quadratic programming and maximum cut problem. The dual of these three types of problems is a 3-block separable convex optimization problem with a coupling linear equation constraint. It is known that, the directly extended 3-block alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM3d) is more efficient than many of its variants for solving these convex optimization, but its convergence is not guaranteed. By choosing initial points properly, we obtain the convergence of ADMM3d for solving the dual of these three types of problems. Furthermore, we simplify the iterative scheme of ADMM3d and show the equivalence of ADMM3d to the 2-block semi-proximal ADMM for solving the dual's reformulation, under these initial conditions.     

An efficient inexact symmetric Gauss–Seidel based majorized ADMM for high-dimensional convex composite conic programming

In this paper, we propose an inexact multi-block ADMM-type first-order method for solving a class of high-dimensional convex composite conic optimization problems to moderate accuracy. The design of this method combines an inexact 2-block majorized semi-proximal ADMM and the recent advances in the inexact symmetric Gauss–Seidel (sGS) technique for solving a multi-block convex composite quadratic programming whose objective contains a nonsmooth term involving only the first block-variable. One distinctive feature of our proposed method (the sGS-imsPADMM) is that it only needs one cycle of an inexact sGS method, instead of an unknown number of cycles, to solve each of the subproblems involved. With some simple and implementable error tolerance criteria, the cost for solving the subproblems can be greatly reduced, and many steps in the forward sweep of each sGS cycle can often be skipped, which further contributes to the efficiency of the proposed method. Global convergence as well as the iteration complexity in the non-ergodic sense is established. Preliminary numerical experiments on some high-dimensional linear and convex quadratic SDP problems with a large number of linear equality and inequality constraints are also provided. The results show that for the vast majority of the tested problems, the sGS-imsPADMM is 2–3 times faster than the directly extended multi-block ADMM with the aggressive step-length of 1.618, which is currently the benchmark among first-order methods for solving multi-block linear and quadratic SDP problems though its convergence is not guaranteed.     

An alternating direction method of multipliers for elliptic equation constrained optimization problem

We propose an alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) for solving the state constrained optimization problems governed by elliptic equations. The unconstrained as well as box-constrained cases of the Dirichlet boundary control, Robin boundary control, and right-hand side control problems are considered here. These continuous optimization problems are transformed into discrete optimization problems by the finite element method discretization, then are solved by ADMM. The ADMM is an efficient first order algorithm with global convergence, which combines the decomposability of dual ascent with the superior convergence properties of the method of multipliers. We shall present exhaustive convergence analysis of ADMM for these different type optimization problems. The numerical experiments are performed to verify the efficiency of the method.     

Low-rank and sparse matrix recovery from noisy observations via 3-block ADMM algorithm

Recovering low-rank and sparse matrix from a given matrix arises in many applications, such as image processing, video background substraction, and so on. The 3-block alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) has been applied successfully to solve convex problems with 3-block variables. However, the existing sufficient conditions to guarantee the convergence of the 3-block ADMM usually require the penalty parameter $\gamma$ to satisfy a certain bound, which may affect the performance of solving the large scale problem in practice. In this paper, we propose the 3-block ADMM to recover low-rank and sparse matrix from noisy observations. In theory, we prove that the 3-block ADMM is convergent when the penalty parameters satisfy a certain condition and the objective function value sequences generated by 3-block ADMM converge to the optimal value. Numerical experiments verify that proposed method can achieve higher performance than existing methods in terms of both efficiency and accuracy.     

基于交替方向乘子法的大规模线性多商品流问题求解算法

企业的商品流通配送问题是典型的线性多商品流问题.由于经营规模的扩大和全球化运营模式的推行,企业所面临的问题规模正变得空前巨大,数据存储也越来越分散,传统方法已无法适应求解需求.本文基于交替方向乘子法(ADMM)的可分解性,提出一类随机ADMM算法,将大规模的问题分解成多个、规模比较小的问题,并采取随机顺序去求解这些小问题以及对偶问题,最终得到原问题的最优解.算法克服了ADMM的直接拓展求解多块问题时可能发散的缺点,并采用MnetGen生成器随机生成的多个规模不同的线性多商品流问题对算法进行了测试,验证了算法的有效性和高效的求解效率.     

An efficient alternating direction method of multipliers for optimal control problems constrained by random Helmholtz equations

Based on the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM), we develop three numerical algorithms incrementally for solving the optimal control problems constrained by random Helmholtz equations. First, we apply the standard Monte Carlo technique and finite element method for the random and spatial discretization, respectively, and then ADMM is used to solve the resulting system. Next, combining the multi-modes expansion, Monte Carlo technique, finite element method, and ADMM, we propose the second algorithm. In the third algorithm, we preprocess certain quantities before the ADMM iteration, so that nearly no random variable is in the inner iteration. This algorithm is the most efficient one and is easy to implement. The error estimates of these three algorithms are established. The numerical experiments verify the efficiency of our algorithms.     

我和乘子交替方向法20年

1997 年, 交通网络分析方面的问题把我引进乘子交替方向法(ADMM)的研究领域. 近10 年来, 原本用来求解变分不等式的ADMM在优化计算中被广泛采用, 影响越来越大. 这里总结了20 年来我们在ADMM 方面的工作, 特别是近10 年 ADMM 在凸优化分裂收缩算法方面的进展. 梳理主要结果, 说清来龙去脉. 文章利用变分不等式的形式研究凸优化的ADMM 类算法, 论及的所有方法都能纳入一个简单的预测-校正统一框架. 在统一框架下证明算法的收缩性质特别简单. 通读, 有利于了解ADMM类算法的概貌. 仔细阅读, 也许就掌握了根据实际问题需要构造分裂算法的基本技巧. 也要清醒地看到, ADMM类算法源自增广拉格朗日乘子法 (ALM) 和邻近点 (PPA)算法, 它只是便于利用问题的可分离结构, 并没有消除 ALM和PPA等一阶算法固有的缺点.     

An inexact alternating direction method of multipliers with relative error criteria

In this paper, we study an inexact version of the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) for solving two-block separable linearly constrained convex optimization problems. Specifically, the two subproblems in the classic ADMM are allowed to be solved inexactly by certain relative error criteria, in the sense that only two parameters are needed to control the inexactness. Related convergence analysis are established under the assumption that the solution set to the KKT system of the problem is not empty. Numerical results on solving a class of sparse signal recovery problems are also provided to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.     

An Augmented ADMM Algorithm With Application to the Generalized Lasso Problem

In this article, we present a fast and stable algorithm for solving a class of optimization problems that arise in many statistical estimation procedures, such as sparse fused lasso over a graph, convex clustering, and trend filtering, among others. We propose a so-called augmented alternating direction methods of multipliers (ADMM) algorithm to solve this class of problems. Compared to a standard ADMM algorithm, our proposal significantly reduces the computational cost at each iteration while maintaining roughly the same overall convergence speed. We also consider a new varying penalty scheme for the ADMM algorithm, which could further accelerate the convergence, especially when solving a sequence of problems with tuning parameters of different scales. Extensive numerical experiments on the sparse fused lasso problem show that the proposed algorithm is more efficient than the standard ADMM and two other existing state-of-the-art specialized algorithms. Finally, we discuss a possible extension and some interesting connections to two well-known algorithms. Supplementary materials for the article are available online.     

A proximal point algorithm revisit on the alternating direction method of multipliers

The alternating direction method of multipliers(ADMM)is a benchmark for solving convex programming problems with separable objective functions and linear constraints.In the literature it has been illustrated as an application of the proximal point algorithm(PPA)to the dual problem of the model under consideration.This paper shows that ADMM can also be regarded as an application of PPA to the primal model with a customized choice of the proximal parameter.This primal illustration of ADMM is thus complemental to its dual illustration in the literature.This PPA revisit on ADMM from the primal perspective also enables us to recover the generalized ADMM proposed by Eckstein and Bertsekas easily.A worst-case O(1/t)convergence rate in ergodic sense is established for a slight extension of Eckstein and Bertsekas’s generalized ADMM.     

A Fast Symmetric Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers

In recent years, alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) and its variants are popular for the extensive use in image processing and statistical learning. A variant of ADMM: symmetric ADMM, which updates the Lagrange multiplier twice in one iteration, is always faster whenever it converges. In this paper, combined with Nesterov's accelerating strategy, an accelerated symmetric ADMM is proposed. We prove its $\mathcal{O}(\frac{1}{k^2})$ convergence rate under strongly convex condition. For the general situation, an accelerated method with a restart rule is proposed. Some preliminary numerical experiments show the efficiency of our algorithms.     

A computation study on an integrated alternating direction method of multipliers for large scale optimization

The alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) has recently received a lot of attention especially due to its capability to harness the power of the new parallel and distributed computing environments. However, ADMM could be notoriously slow especially if the penalty parameter, assigned to the augmented term in the objective function, is not properly chosen. This paper aims to accelerate ADMM by integrating that with the Barzilai–Borwein gradient method and an acceleration technique known as line search. Line search accelerates an iterative method by performing a one-dimensional search along the line segment connecting two successive iterations. We pay a special attention to the large-scale nonnegative least squares problems, and our experiments using real datasets indicate that the integration not only accelerate ADMM but also robustifies that against the penalty parameter.     

A HOMOTOPY-BASED ALTERNATING DIRECTION METHOD OF MULTIPLIERS FOR STRUCTURED CONVEX OPTIMIZATION

The alternating direction method of multipliers(ADMM for short) is efficient for linearly constrained convex optimization problem. The practical computational cost of ADMM depends on the sub-problem solvers. The proximal point algorithm is a common sub-problem-solver. However, the proximal parameter is sensitive in the proximal ADMM. In this paper, we propose a homotopy-based proximal linearized ADMM, in which a homotopy method is used to solve the sub-problems at each iteration. Under some suitable conditions, the global convergence and the convergence rate of O(1/k) in the worst case of the proposed method are proven. Some preliminary numerical results indicate the validity of the proposed method.     

随机ADMM算法及其在电力系统凸经济调度问题中的应用

针对电力系统中的一类凸经济调度问题,提出了随机ADMM算法,设计了周期循环更新规则和随机选择更新规则,证明了随机ADMM算法在周期循环更新规则下的收敛性,以及得出了在随机选择更新规则下按期望收敛的结论.数值实验结果表明该方法可以有效解决电力系统中的凸经济调度问题.     

An alternating direction and projection algorithm for structure-enforced matrix factorization

Structure-enforced matrix factorization (SeMF) represents a large class of mathematical models appearing in various forms of principal component analysis, sparse coding, dictionary learning and other machine learning techniques useful in many applications including neuroscience and signal processing. In this paper, we present a unified algorithm framework, based on the classic alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM), for solving a wide range of SeMF problems whose constraint sets permit low-complexity projections. We propose a strategy to adaptively adjust the penalty parameters which is the key to achieving good performance for ADMM. We conduct extensive numerical experiments to compare the proposed algorithm with a number of state-of-the-art special-purpose algorithms on test problems including dictionary learning for sparse representation and sparse nonnegative matrix factorization. Results show that our unified SeMF algorithm can solve different types of factorization problems as reliably and as efficiently as special-purpose algorithms. In particular, our SeMF algorithm provides the ability to explicitly enforce various combinatorial sparsity patterns that, to our knowledge, has not been considered in existing approaches.     

Convergence analysis of positive-indefinite proximal ADMM with a Glowinski’s relaxation factor

Numerical Algorithms - In this paper, we propose a modified positive-indefinite proximal linearized ADMM (PIPL-ADMM) with a larger Glowinski’s relaxation factor for solving two-block linearly...     

A partially isochronous splitting algorithm for three-block separable convex minimization problems

During the last decade, the state-of-the-art alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) has successfully been used to solve many two-block separable convex minimization problems arising from several applied areas such as signal/image processing and statistical and machine learning. It however remains an interesting problem of how to implement ADMM to three-block separable convex minimization problems as required by the situation where many objective functions in the above-mentioned areas are actually more conveniently decomposed to the sum of three convex functions, due also to the observation that the straightforward extension of ADMM from the two-block case to the three-block case is apparently not convergent. In this paper, we shall introduce a new algorithm that is called a partially isochronous splitting algorithm (PISA) in order to implement ADMM for the three-block separable model. The main idea of our algorithm is to incorporate only one proximal term into the last subproblem of the extended ADMM so that the resulting algorithm maximally inherits the promising properties of ADMM. A remarkable superiority over the extended ADMM is that we can simultaneously solve two of the subproblems, thereby taking advantages of the separable structure and parallel architectures. Theoretically, we will establish the global convergence of our algorithm under standard conditions, and also the O(1/t) rate of convergence in both ergodic and nonergodic senses, where t is the iteration counter. The computational competitiveness of our algorithm is shown by numerical experiments on an application to the well-tested robust principal component analysis model.     

Linearized Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers for Separable Convex Optimization of Real Functions in Complex Domain

The alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) for separable convex optimization of real functions in complex variables has been proposed recently[21]. Furthermore, the convergence and $O(1/K)$ convergence rate of ADMM in complex domain have also been derived[22]. In this paper, a fast linearized ADMM in complex domain has been presented as the subproblems do not have closed solutions. First, some useful results in complex domain are developed by using the Wirtinger Calculus technique. Second, the convergence of the linearized ADMM in complex domain based on the VI is established. Third, an extended model of least absolute shrinkage and selectionator operator (LASSO) is solved by using linearized ADMM in complex domain. Finally, some numerical simulations are provided to show that linearized ADMM in complex domain has the rapid speed.     

Matroid optimisation problems with nested non-linear monomials in the objective function

We derive a new approximate version of the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) which uses a relative error criterion. The new version is somewhat restrictive and allows only one of the two subproblems to be minimized approximately, but nevertheless covers commonly encountered special cases. The derivation exploits the long-established relationship between the ADMM and both the proximal point algorithm (PPA) and Douglas–Rachford (DR) splitting for maximal monotone operators, along with a relative-error of the PPA due to Solodov and Svaiter. In the course of analysis, we also derive a version of DR splitting in which one operator may be evaluated approximately using a relative error criterion. We computationally evaluate our method on several classes of test problems and find that it significantly outperforms several alternatives on one problem class.     

On the mixed integer signomial programming problems

This paper proposes an approximate method to solve the mixed integer signomial programming problem, for which the objective function and the constraints may contain product terms with exponents and decision variables, which could be continuous or integral. A linear programming relaxation is derived for the problem based on piecewise linearization techniques, which first convert a signomial term into the sum of absolute terms; these absolute terms are then linearized by linearization strategies. In addition, a novel approach is included for solving integer and undefined problems in the logarithmic piecewise technique, which leads to more usefulness of the proposed method. The proposed method could reach a solution as close as possible to the global optimum.