Topological Coded Distributed Computing

This paper considers the MapReduce-like coded distributed computing framework originally proposed by Li et al., which uses coding techniques when distributed computing servers exchange their computed intermediate values, in order to reduce the overall traffic load. In their original model, servers are connected via an error-free common communication bus allowing broadcast transmissions. However, this assumption is one of the major limitations for practical implementations since real-world data centers may have network topologies far more involved than a single broadcast bus. We formulate a topological coded distributed computing problem, where the computing servers communicate with each other through some switch network. By using a special instance of fat-tree topologies, referred to as t-ary fat-tree proposed by Al-Fares et al. which can be built by some inexpensive switches, we propose a coded distributed computing scheme to achieve the optimal max-link communication load (defined as the maximum load over all links) over any network topology.