Byzantine-Robust and Communication-Efficient Distributed Training: Compressive and Cyclic Gradient Coding

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Li, Chengxi, Allouah, Youssef, Guerraoui, Rachid, Skoglund, Mikael, Xiao, Ming
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Li, Chengxi
Allouah, Youssef
Guerraoui, Rachid
Skoglund, Mikael
Xiao, Ming
author_facet Li, Chengxi
Allouah, Youssef
Guerraoui, Rachid
Skoglund, Mikael
Xiao, Ming
contents In this paper, we study the problem of distributed training (DT) under Byzantine attacks with communication constraints. While prior work has developed various robust aggregation rules at the server to enhance robustness to Byzantine attacks, the existing methods suffer from a critical limitation in that the solution error does not diminish when the local gradients sent by different devices vary considerably, as a result of data heterogeneity among the subsets held by different devices. To overcome this limitation, we propose a novel DT method, cyclic gradient coding-based DT (LAD). In LAD, the server allocates the entire training dataset to the devices before training begins. In each iteration, it assigns computational tasks redundantly to the devices using cyclic gradient coding. Each honest device then computes local gradients on a fixed number of data subsets and encodes the local gradients before transmitting to the server. The server aggregates the coded vectors from the honest devices and the potentially incorrect messages from Byzantine devices using a robust aggregation rule. Leveraging the redundancy of computation across devices, the convergence performance of LAD is analytically characterized, demonstrating improved robustness against Byzantine attacks and significantly lower solution error. Furthermore, we extend LAD to a communication-efficient variant, compressive and cyclic gradient coding-based DT (Com-LAD), which further reduces communication overhead under constrained settings. Numerical results validate the effectiveness of the proposed methods in enhancing both Byzantine resilience and communication efficiency.
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publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Byzantine-Robust and Communication-Efficient Distributed Training: Compressive and Cyclic Gradient Coding
Li, Chengxi
Allouah, Youssef
Guerraoui, Rachid
Skoglund, Mikael
Xiao, Ming
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Artificial Intelligence
In this paper, we study the problem of distributed training (DT) under Byzantine attacks with communication constraints. While prior work has developed various robust aggregation rules at the server to enhance robustness to Byzantine attacks, the existing methods suffer from a critical limitation in that the solution error does not diminish when the local gradients sent by different devices vary considerably, as a result of data heterogeneity among the subsets held by different devices. To overcome this limitation, we propose a novel DT method, cyclic gradient coding-based DT (LAD). In LAD, the server allocates the entire training dataset to the devices before training begins. In each iteration, it assigns computational tasks redundantly to the devices using cyclic gradient coding. Each honest device then computes local gradients on a fixed number of data subsets and encodes the local gradients before transmitting to the server. The server aggregates the coded vectors from the honest devices and the potentially incorrect messages from Byzantine devices using a robust aggregation rule. Leveraging the redundancy of computation across devices, the convergence performance of LAD is analytically characterized, demonstrating improved robustness against Byzantine attacks and significantly lower solution error. Furthermore, we extend LAD to a communication-efficient variant, compressive and cyclic gradient coding-based DT (Com-LAD), which further reduces communication overhead under constrained settings. Numerical results validate the effectiveness of the proposed methods in enhancing both Byzantine resilience and communication efficiency.
title Byzantine-Robust and Communication-Efficient Distributed Training: Compressive and Cyclic Gradient Coding
topic Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.28780