Simple Round Compression for Parallel Vertex Cover

Abstract: Recently, Czumaj et.al. (arXiv 2017) presented a parallel (almost) $2$-approximation algorithm for the maximum matching problem in only $O({(\log\log{n})<sup>2})$ rounds of the massive parallel computation (MPC) framework, when the memory per machine is $O(n)$. The main approach in their work is a way of compressing $O(\log{n})$ rounds of a distributed algorithm for maximum matching into only $O({(\log\log{n})<sup>2})$ MPC rounds. In this note, we present a similar algorithm for the closely related problem of approximating the minimum vertex cover in the MPC framework. We show that one can achieve an $O(\log{n})$ approximation to minimum vertex cover in only $O(\log\log{n})$ MPC rounds when the memory per machine is $O(n)$. Our algorithm for vertex cover is similar to the maximum matching algorithm of Czumaj et.al. but avoids many of the intricacies in their approach and as a result admits a considerably simpler analysis (at a cost of a worse approximation guarantee). We obtain this result by modifying a previous parallel algorithm by Khanna and the author (SPAA 2017) for vertex cover that allowed for compressing $O(\log{n})$ rounds of a distributed algorithm into constant MPC rounds when the memory allowed per machine is $O(n\sqrt{n})$.