Distributed Asynchronous Relaxation Methods for Convex Network Flow Problems

Abstract

We consider the solution of the single commodity strictly convex network flow problem in a distributed asynchronous computation environment. The dual ofthis problem is unconstrained, differentiable, and well suited for solution via Gauss-Seidel relaxation. We show that the structure of the dual allows the successful application of a distributed asynchronous method whereby relaxation iterations are carried out in parallel by several processors in arbitrary order and with arbitrarily large interprocessor communication delays.