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Summary: A Theory of Competitive Analysis for Distributed Algorithms
Miklos Ajtai James Aspnesy
Cynthia Dwork Orli Waartsz
Abstract
We introduce a theory of competitive analysis for
distributed algorithms. The rst steps in this direc-
tion were made in the seminal papers of Bartal, Fiat,
and Rabani 17], and of Awerbuch, Kutten, and Pe-
leg 15], in the context of data management and job
scheduling. In these papers, as well as in other sub-
sequent work 14, 4, 18], the cost of a distributed al-
gorithm is compared to the cost of an optimal global-
control algorithm. Here we introduce a more re ned
notion of competitiveness for distributed algorithms,
one that re ects the performance of distributed algo-
rithms more accurately. In particular, our theory al-
lows one to compare the cost of a distributed on-line
algorithm to the cost of an optimal distributed algo-
rithm. We demonstrate our method by studying the
cooperative collect primitive, rst abstracted by Saks,
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