Large-scale semi-discrete optimal transport with distributed Voronoi diagrams

In this article, I propose a numerical method to solve semi-discrete optimal transport problems for gigantic pointsets (10⁸ points and more). By pushing the limits by several orders of magnitude, it opens the path to new applications in cosmology, fluid simulation and data science to name but a few. The method is based on a new algorithm that computes (generalized) Voronoi diagrams in parallel and in a distributed way. First I make the simple observation that the cells defined by a subgraph of the Delaunay graph contain the Voronoi cells, and that one can deduce the missing edges from the intersections between those cells. Based on this observation, I introduce the Distributed Voronoi Diagram algorithm (DVD) that can be used on a cluster and that exchanges vertices between the nodes as need be. I also report early experimental results, demonstrating that the DVD algorithm has the potential to solve some giga-scale semi-discrete optimal transport problems encountered in computational cosmology.