Title: Communication-Efficient Decentralized Optimization via Double-Communication Symmetric ADMM
Primary area: optimization
Keywords: Decentralized Optimization, Symmetric ADMM, Multi-Communication

Abstract: This paper focuses on decentralized composite optimization over networks without a central coordinator. We propose a novel decentralized Symmetric ADMM algorithm that incorporates multiple communication rounds within each iteration, derived from a new constraint formulation that enables information exchange beyond immediate neighbors. While increasing per-iteration communication, our approach significantly reduces the total number of iterations and overall communication cost. We further design optimal communication rules that minimize the number of rounds and variables transmitted per iteration. The proposed algorithms are shown to achieve linear convergence under standard assumptions. Extensive experiments on regression and classification tasks validate the theoretical results and demonstrate superior performance compared to existing decentralized optimization methods. To our knowledge, this is the first decentralized optimization framework that achieves a net reduction in total communication by leveraging fixed multi-round communication within each iteration.