Low Complexity Distributed Computing via Binary Matrices with Extension to Stragglers

We consider the distributed computing framework of MapReduce, which consists of three phases, the Map phase, the Shuffle phase and the Reduce phase. For this framework, we propose the use of binary matrices (with 0,1 entries) called computing matrices to describe the map phase and the shuffle phase. Similar binary matrices were recently proposed for the coded caching framework. The structure of ones and zeroes in the binary computing matrix captures the map phase of the MapReduce framework. We present a new simple coded data shuffling scheme for this binary matrix model, based on a identity submatrix cover of the computing matrix. This new coded shuffling scheme has in general a larger communication load than existing schemes, but has the advantage of less complexity overhead than the well-known earlier schemes in literature in terms of the file-splitting and associated indexing and coordination required. We also show that there exists a binary matrix based distributed computing scheme with our new data-shuffling scheme which has strictly less than twice than the communication load of the known optimal scheme in literature. The structure of this new scheme enables it to be applied to the framework of MapReduce with stragglers also, in a straightforward manner, borrowing its advantages and disadvantages from the no-straggler situation. Finally, using binary matrices derived from combinatorial designs, we show specific classes of computing schemes with very low file complexity (number of subfiles in the file), with marginally higher communication load compared to the optimal scheme for equivalent parameters.