A forward-backward algorithm for decomposable semi-definite programs

Abstract

We present semi-decentralized and distributed algorithms, designed via a preconditioned forward-backward operator splitting, for solving large-scale, decomposable semi-definite programs (SDPs). We exploit a chordal aggregate sparsity pattern assumption on the original SDP to obtain a set of mutually coupled SDPs defined on positive semidefinite (PSD) cones of reduced dimensions. We show that the proposed algorithms converge to a solution of the original SDP via iterations of reasonable computational cost, numerically comparing their performances with respect to others available in the literature.