Robust Convergence Analysis of Distributed Optimization Algorithms

We present a unified framework for analyzing the convergence of distributed optimization algorithms by formulating a semidefinite program (SDP) which can be efficiently solved to bound the linear rate of convergence. Two different SDP formulations are considered. First, we formulate an SDP that depends explicitly on the gossip matrix of the network graph. This result provides bounds that depend explicitly on the graph topology, but the SDP dimension scales with the size of the graph. Second, we formulate an SDP that depends implicitly on the gossip matrix via its spectral gap. This result provides coarser bounds, but yields a small SDP that is independent of graph size. Our approach improves upon existing bounds for the algorithms we analyzed, and numerical simulations reveal that our bounds are likely tight. The efficient and automated nature of our analysis makes it a powerful tool for algorithm selection and tuning, and for the discovery of new algorithms as well.