Linear Convergence of a Frank-Wolfe Type Algorithm over Trace-Norm Balls

Abstract

We propose a rank-$k$ variant of the classical Frank-Wolfe algorithm to solve convex optimization over a trace-norm ball. Our algorithm replaces the top singular-vector computation ($1$-SVD) in Frank-Wolfe with a top-$k$ singular-vector computation ($k$-SVD), which can be done by repeatedly applying $1$-SVD $k$ times. Alternatively, our algorithm can be viewed as a rank-$k$ restricted version of projected gradient descent. We show that our algorithm has a linear convergence rate when the objective function is smooth and strongly convex, and the optimal solution has rank at most $k$. This improves the convergence rate and the total time complexity of the Frank-Wolfe method and its variants.