A First-Order Algorithm for Decentralised Min-Max Problems

Abstract

In this work, we consider a connected network of finitely many agents working cooperatively to solve a min-max problem with convex-concave structure. We propose a decentralised first-order algorithm which can be viewed as a non-trivial combination of two algorithms: PG-EXTRA for decentralised minimisation problems and the forward reflected backward method for (non-distributed) min-max problems. In each iteration of our algorithm, each agent computes the gradient of the smooth component of its local objective function as well as the proximal operator of its nonsmooth component, following by a round of communication with its neighbours. Our analysis shows that the sequence generated by the method converges under standard assumptions with non-decaying stepsize.