Many differentially private and classical non-private graph algorithms rely crucially on determining whether some property of each vertex meets a threshold. For example, for the k-core decomposition problem, the classic peeling algorithm iteratively removes a vertex if its induced degree falls below a threshold. The sparse vector technique (SVT) is generally used to transform non-private threshold queries into private ones with only a small additive loss in accuracy. However, a naive application of SVT in the graph setting leads to an amplification of the error by a factor of n due to composition, as SVT is applied to every vertex. In this paper, we resolve this problem by formulating a novel generalized sparse vector technique which we call the Multidimensional AboveThreshold (MAT) Mechanism which generalizes SVT (applied to vectors with one dimension) to vectors with multiple dimensions. When applied to vectors with n dimensions, we solve a number of important graph problems with better bounds than previous work. Specifically, we apply our MAT mechanism to obtain a set of improved bounds for a variety of problems including k-core decomposition, densest subgraph, low out-degree ordering, and vertex coloring. We give a tight local edge differentially private (LEDP) algorithm for k-core decomposition that results in an approximation with O(ε^{-1} log n) additive error and no multiplicative error in O(n) rounds. We also give a new (2+η)-factor multiplicative, O(ε^{-1} log n) additive error algorithm in O(log² n) rounds for any constant η > 0. Both of these results are asymptotically tight against our new lower bound of Ω(log n) for any constant-factor approximation algorithm for k-core decomposition. Our new algorithms for k-core decomposition also directly lead to new algorithms for the related problems of densest subgraph and low out-degree ordering. Finally, we give novel LEDP differentially private defective coloring algorithms that use number of colors given in terms of the arboricity of the graph.

We introduce the Weighted Red-Blue Pebble Game, an extension of the classic red-blue pebble game with weighted operation costs. This weighted formulation enables constant-factor analysis of highly resource-constrained systems with bounded fast memory, unlimited slow memory, and strict energy and power constraints.

The rise of massive networks across diverse domains necessitates sophisticated graph analytics, often involving sensitive data and raising privacy concerns. This paper addresses these challenges using local differential privacy (LDP) , which enforces privacy at the individual level, where no third-party entity is trusted , unlike centralized models that assume a trusted curator. We introduce novel LDP algorithms for two fundamental graph statistics: k -core decomposition and triangle counting. Our approach leverages input-dependent private graph properties—specifically degeneracy and maximum degree—to improve theoretical utility. Unlike prior methods, our error bounds depend on the maximum degree rather than the total edge count, yielding significantly tighter guarantees. For triangle counting, we improve on the work of Imola, Murakami, and Chaudhury [USENIX Security '21, '22], which bounds error in terms of edge count. Our algorithm instead achieves bounds based on degeneracy by leveraging a private out-degree orientation, a refined variant of Eden et al.'s randomized response technique [ICALP '23], and a novel analysis, yielding stronger guarantees than prior work. Beyond theoretical gains, we are the first to evaluate local DP algorithms in a distributed simulation, unlike prior work tested on a single processor. Experiments on real-world graphs show substantial accuracy gains: our k -core decomposition achieves errors within 3 x of exact values, far outperforming the 131x error in the baseline of Dhulipala et al. [FOCS '22]. Our triangle counting algorithm reduces multiplicative approximation errors by up to six orders of magnitude , while maintaining competitive runtime.

The densest subgraph problem has received significant attention, both in theory and in practice, due to its applications in problems such as community detection, social network analysis, and spam detection. Due to the high cost of obtaining exact solutions, much attention has focused on designing approximate densest subgraph algorithms. However, existing approaches are not able to scale to massive graphs with billions of edges.

The main bottleneck in designing efficient dynamic algorithms is the unknown nature of the update sequence. In particular, there are problems where the separation in runtime between the best offline or partially dynamic solutions and the best fully dynamic solutions is polynomial, sometimes even exponential. In this paper, we formulate the \emph{predicted-updates dynamic model}, one of the first \emph{beyond-worst-case} models for dynamic algorithms, which generalizes a large set of well-studied dynamic models including the offline dynamic, incremental, and decremental models to the fully dynamic setting when given predictions about the update times of the elements. Our paper models real world settings, in which we often have access to side information that allows us to make coarse predictions about future updates. We formulate a framework that bridges the gap between fully and offline/partially dynamic, leading to greatly improved runtime bounds over the state-of-the-art dynamic algorithms for a variety of important problems such as triconnectivity, planar digraph all pairs shortest paths, \(k\)-edge connectivity, and others, for prediction error of reasonable magnitude. Our simple framework avoids heavy machinery, potentially leading to a new set of dynamic algorithms that are implementable in practice.

In this short note, we give a novel algorithm for O(1) round triangle counting in bounded arboricity graphs. Counting triangles in O(1) rounds (exactly) is listed as one of the interesting remaining open problems in the recent survey of Im et al. [17]. The previous paper of Biswas et al. [8], which achieved the best bounds under this setting, used O(log log n) rounds in sublinear space per machine and O(mα) total space where α is the arboricity of the graph and n and m are the number of vertices and edges in the graph, respectively. Our new algorithm is very simple, achieves the optimal O(1) rounds without increasing the space per machine and the total space, and has the potential of being easily implementable in practice.

Maintaining a dynamic k-core decomposition is an important problem that identifies dense subgraphs in dynamically changing graphs. Recent work by Liu et al. [SPAA 2022] presents a parallel batch-dynamic algorithm for maintaining an approximate k-core decomposition. In their solution, both reads and updates need to be batched, and therefore each type of operation can incur high latency waiting for the other type to finish. To tackle most real-world workloads, which are dominated by reads, this paper presents a novel hybrid concurrent-parallel dynamic k-core data structure where asynchronous reads can proceed concurrently with batches of updates, leading to significantly lower read latencies. Our approach is based on tracking causal dependencies between updates, so that causally related groups of updates appear atomic to concurrent readers. Our data structure guarantees linearizability and liveness for both reads and updates, and maintains the same approximation guarantees as prior work. Our experimental evaluation on a 30-core machine shows that our approach reduces read latency by orders of magnitude compared to the batch-dynamic algorithm, up to a (4.05 · 105)-factor. Compared to an unsynchronized (non-linearizable) baseline, our read latency overhead is only up to a 3.21-factor greater, while improving accuracy of coreness estimates by up to a factor of 52.7.

Bipartite maximum matching and its variants are well-studied problems under various models of computation with the vast majority of approaches centering around various methods to find and eliminate augmenting paths. Beginning with the seminal papers of Demange, Gale and Sotomayor [DGS86] and Bertsekas [Ber81], bipartite maximum matching problems have also been studied in the context of auction algorithms. These algorithms model the maximum matching problem as an auction where one side of the bipartite graph consists of bidders and the other side consists of items; as such, these algorithms offer a very different approach to solving this problem that do not use classical methods. Dobzinski, Nisan and Oren [DNO14] demonstrated the utility of such algorithms in distributed, interactive settings by providing a simple and elegant O(log n/ε²) round maximum cardinality bipartite matching (MCM) algorithm that has small round and communication complexity and gives a (1-ε)-approximation for any (not necessarily constant) ε > 0. They leave as an open problem whether an auction algorithm, with similar guarantees, can be found for the maximum weighted bipartite matching (MWM) problem. Very recently, Assadi, Liu, and Tarjan [ALT21] extended the utility of auction algorithms for MCM into the semi-streaming and massively parallel computation (MPC) models, by cleverly using maximal matching as a subroutine, to give a new auction algorithm that uses O(1/ε²) rounds and achieves the state-of-the-art bipartite MCM results in the streaming and MPC settings. In this paper, we give new auction algorithms for maximum weighted bipartite matching (MWM) and maximum cardinality bipartite b-matching (MCbM). Our algorithms run in O(log n/ε⁸) and O(log n/ε²) rounds, respectively, in the distributed setting. We show that our MWM algorithm can be implemented in the distributed, interactive setting using O(log² n) and O(log n) bit messages, respectively, directly answering the open question posed by Demange, Gale and Sotomayor [DNO14]. Furthermore, we implement our algorithms in a variety of other models including the the semi-streaming model, the shared-memory work-depth model, and the massively parallel computation model. Our semi-streaming MWM algorithm uses O(1/ε⁸) passes in O(n log n ⋅ log(1/ε)) space and our MCbM algorithm runs in O(1/ε²) passes using O((∑_{i ∈ L} b_i + |R|) log(1/ε)) space (where parameters b_i represent the degree constraints on the b-matching and L and R represent the left and right side of the bipartite graph, respectively). Both of these algorithms improves exponentially the dependence on ε in the space complexity in the semi-streaming model against the best-known algorithms for these problems, in addition to improvements in round complexity for MCbM. Finally, our algorithms eliminate the large polylogarithmic dependence on n in depth and number of rounds in the work-depth and massively parallel computation models, respectively, improving on previous results which have large polylogarithmic dependence on n (and exponential dependence on ε in the MPC model).

Many deployments of differential privacy in industry are in the local model, where each party releases its private information via a differentially private randomizer. We study triangle counting in the local model with edge differential privacy (that, intuitively, requires that the outputs of the algorithm on graphs that differ in one edge be indistinguishable). In this model, each party's local view consists of the adjacency list of one vertex. We investigate both noninteractive and interactive variants of the model. In the noninteractive model, we prove that additive $Ω(n^2)$ error is necessary for sufficiently small constant $\varepsilon$, where $n$ is the number of nodes and $\varepsilon$ is the privacy parameter. This lower bound is our main technical contribution. It uses a reconstruction attack with a new class of linear queries and a novel mix-and-match strategy of running the local randomizers with different completions of their adjacency lists. It matches the additive error of the algorithm based on Randomized Response, proposed by Imola, Murakami and Chaudhuri (USENIX2021) and analyzed by Imola, Murakami and Chaudhuri (CCS2022) for constant $\varepsilon$. We use a different postprocessing of Randomized Response and provide tight bounds on the variance of the resulting algorithm. In the interactive setting, we prove a lower bound of $Ω(n^{3/2}/\varepsilon)$ on the additive error for $\varepsilon\leq 1$. Previously, no hardness results were known for interactive, edge-private algorithms in the local model, except for those that follow trivially from the results for the central model. Our work significantly improves on the state of the art in differentially private graph analysis in the local model.

Over the last two decades, frameworks for distributed-memory parallel computation, such as MapReduce, Hadoop, Spark and Dryad, have gained significant popularity with the growing prevalence of large network datasets. The Massively Parallel Computation (MPC) model is the de-facto standard for studying graph algorithms in these frameworks theoretically. Subgraph counting is one such fundamental problem in analyzing massive graphs, with the main algorithmic challenges centering on designing methods which are both scalable and accurate. Given a graph $G=(V, E)$ with $n$ vertices, $m$ edges and $T$ triangles, our first result is an algorithm that outputs a $(1+\varepsilon)$-approximation to $T$, with asymptotically \emph{optimal round and total space complexity} provided any $S \geq \max{(\sqrt m, n^2/m)}$ space per machine and assuming $T=Ω(\sqrt{m/n})$. Our result gives a quadratic improvement on the bound on $T$ over previous works. We also provide a simple extension of our result to counting \emph{any} subgraph of $k$ size for constant $k \geq 1$. Our second result is an $O_{\varepsilon}(\log \log n)$-round algorithm for exactly counting the number of triangles, whose total space usage is parametrized by the \emph{arboricity} $α$ of the input graph. We extend this result to exactly counting $k$-cliques for any constant $k$. Finally, we prove that a recent result of Bera, Pashanasangi and Seshadhri (ITCS 2020) for exactly counting all subgraphs of size at most $5$ can be implemented in the MPC model in total space.

Differentially private algorithms allow large-scale data analytics while preserving user privacy. Designing such algorithms for graph data is gaining importance with the growth of large networks that model various (sensitive) relationships between individuals. While there exists a rich history of important literature in this space, to the best of our knowledge, no results formalize a relationship between certain parallel and distributed graph algorithms and differentially private graph analysis. In this paper, we define locally adjustable graph algorithms and show that algorithms of this type can be transformed into differentially private algorithms. Our formalization is motivated by a set of results that we present in the central and local models of differential privacy for a number of problems, including k-core decomposition, low out-degree ordering, and densest subgraphs. First, we design an $\varepsilon$-edge differentially private (DP) algorithm that returns a subset of nodes that induce a subgraph of density at least $ \frac{D^{*}}{1+\eta}-O(\operatorname{poly}(\log n)/\varepsilon)$, where $D^{*}$ is the density of the densest subgraph in the input graph (for any constant $\eta\gt 0$). This algorithm achieves a two-fold improvement on the multiplicative approximation factor of the previously best-known private densest subgraph algorithms while maintaining a near-linear runtime. Then, we present an $\varepsilon$-locally edge differentially private (LEDP) algorithm for k-core decompositions. Our LEDP algorithm provides approximates the core numbers (for any constant $\eta\gt 0$) with $(2+\eta)$ multiplicative and $O(\operatorname{poly}(\log n)/\varepsilon)$ additive error. This is the first differentially private algorithm that outputs private k-core decomposition statistics. We also modify our algorithm to return a differentially private low out-degree ordering of the nodes, where orienting the edges from nodes earlier in the ordering to nodes later in the ordering results in out-degree at most $O(d+$ poly $(\log n)/\varepsilon$) (where d is the degeneracy of the graph). A small modification to the algorithm also yields a $\varepsilon$-LEDP algorithm for $(4+\eta,O(\operatorname{poly}(\log n)/\varepsilon))$ approximate densest subgraph (which returns both the set of nodes in the subgraph and its density). Our algorithm uses $O(\log^{2}n)$ rounds of communication between the curator and individual nodes.

The field of dynamic graph algorithms aims at achieving a thorough understanding of real-world networks whose topology evolves with time. Traditionally, the focus has been on the classic sequential, centralized setting where the main quality measure of an algorithm is its update time, i.e. the time needed to restore the solution after each update. While real-life networks are very often distributed across multiple machines, the fundamental question of finding efficient dynamic, distributed graph algorithms received little attention to date. The goal in this setting is to optimize both the round and message complexities incurred per update step, ideally achieving a message complexity that matches the centralized update time in $O(1)$ (perhaps amortized) rounds. Toward initiating a systematic study of dynamic, distributed algorithms, we study some of the most central symmetry-breaking problems: maximal independent set (MIS), maximal matching/(approx-) maximum cardinality matching (MM/MCM), and $(Δ+ 1)$-vertex coloring. This paper focuses on dynamic, distributed algorithms that are deterministic, and in particular -- robust against an adaptive adversary. Most of our focus is on our MIS algorithm, which achieves $O\left(m^{2/3}\log^2 n\right)$ amortized messages in $O\left(\log^2 n\right)$ amortized rounds in the Congest model. Notably, the amortized message complexity of our algorithm matches the amortized update time of the best-known deterministic centralized MIS algorithm by Gupta and Khan [SOSA'21] up to a polylog $n$ factor. The previous best deterministic distributed MIS algorithm, by Assadi et al. [STOC'18], uses $O(m^{3/4})$ amortized messages in $O(1)$ amortized rounds, i.e., we achieve a polynomial improvement in the message complexity by a polylog $n$ increase to the round complexity; moreover, the algorithm of Assadi et al. makes an implicit assumption that the [...]

Maintaining a k-core decomposition quickly in a dynamic graph has important applications in network analysis. The main challenge for designing efficient exact algorithms is that a single update to the graph can cause significant global changes. Our paper focuses on approximation algorithms with small approximation factors that are much more efficient than what exact algorithms can obtain.

We consider the problem of efficiently scheduling jobs with precedence constraints on a set of identical machines in the presence of a uniform communication delay. Such precedence-constrained jobs can be modeled as a directed acyclic graph, G = (V, E). In this setting, if two precedence-constrained jobs u and v, with v dependent on u (u ≺ v), are scheduled on different machines, then v must start at least ρ time units after u completes. The scheduling objective is to minimize makespan, i.e. the total time from when the first job starts to when the last job finishes. The focus of this paper is to provide an efficient approximation algorithm with near-linear running time. We build on the algorithm of Lepere and Rapine [STACS 2002] for this problem to give an O((ln ρ)/(ln ln ρ))-approximation algorithm that runs in Õ(|V|+|E|) time.

The problem of (Δ +1)-vertex coloring a graph of maximum degree Δ has been extremely well studied over the years in various settings and models. Surprisingly, for the dynamic setting, almost nothing was known until recently. In SODA’18, Bhattacharya, Chakrabarty, Henzinger and Nanongkai devised a randomized algorithm for maintaining a (Δ +1)-coloring with O (log Δ) expected amortized update time. In this article, we present an improved randomized algorithm for (Δ +1)-coloring that achieves O (1) amortized update time and show that this bound holds not only in expectation but also with high probability. Our starting point is the state-of-the-art randomized algorithm for maintaining a maximal matching (Solomon, FOCS’16). We carefully build on the approach of Solomon, but, due to inherent differences between the maximal matching and (Δ +1)-coloring problems, we need to deviate significantly from it in several crucial and highly nontrivial points. 1

Nakamoto consensus underlies the security of many of the world's largest cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Common lore is that Nakamoto consensus only achieves consistency and liveness under a regime where the difficulty of its underlying mining puzzle is very high, negatively impacting overall throughput and latency. In this work, we study Nakamoto consensus under a wide range of puzzle difficulties, including very easy puzzles. We first analyze an adversary-free setting and show that, surprisingly, the common prefix of the blockchain grows quickly even with easy puzzles. In a setting with adversaries, we provide a small backwards-compatible change to Nakamoto consensus to achieve consistency and liveness with easy puzzles. Our insight relies on a careful choice of \emph{symmetry-breaking strategy}, which was significantly underestimated in prior work. We introduce a new method -- \emph{coalescing random walks} -- to analyzing the correctness of Nakamoto consensus under the uniformly-at-random symmetry-breaking strategy. This method is more powerful than existing analysis methods that focus on bounding the number of {\it convergence opportunities}.

Cache-adaptive analysis was introduced to analyze the performance of an algorithm when the cache (or internal memory) available to the algorithm dynamically changes size. These memory-size fluctuations are, in fact, the common case in multi-core machines, where threads share cache and RAM. An algorithm is said to be efficiently cache-adaptive if it achieves optimal utilization of the dynamically changing cache. Cache-adaptive analysis was inspired by cache-oblivious analysis. Many (or even most) optimal cache-oblivious algorithms have an $(a,b,c)$-regular recursive structure. Such $(a, b, c)$-regular algorithms include Longest Common Subsequence, All Pairs Shortest Paths, Matrix Multiplication, Edit Distance, Gaussian Elimination Paradigm, etc. Bender et al. (2016) showed that some of these optimal cache-oblivious algorithms remain optimal even when cache changes size dynamically, but that in general they can be as much as logarithmic factor away from optimal. However, their analysis depends on constructing a highly structured, worst-case memory profile, or sequences of fluctuations in cache size. These worst-case profiles seem fragile, suggesting that the logarithmic gap may be an artifact of an unrealistically powerful adversary. We close the gap between cache-oblivious and cache-adaptive analysis by showing how to make a smoothed analysis of cache-adaptive algorithms via random reshuffling of memory fluctuations. Remarkably, we also show the limits of several natural forms of smoothing, including random perturbations of the cache size and randomizing the algorithm's starting time. Nonetheless, we show that if one takes an arbitrary profile and performs a random shuffle on when "significant events'' occur within the profile, then the shuffled profile becomes optimally cache-adaptive in expectation, even when the initial profile is adversarially constructed. These results suggest that cache-obliviousness is a solid foundation for achieving cache-adaptivity when the memory profile is not overly tailored to the algorithm structure.

We develop a framework for generalizing approximation algorithms from the structural graph algorithm literature so that they apply to graphs somewhat close to that class (a scenario we expect is common when working with real-world networks) while still guaranteeing approximation ratios. The idea is to edit a given graph via vertex- or edge-deletions to put the graph into an algorithmically tractable class, apply known approximation algorithms for that class, and then lift the solution to apply to the original graph. We give a general characterization of when an optimization problem is amenable to this approach, and show that it includes many well-studied graph problems, such as Independent Set, Vertex Cover, Feedback Vertex Set, Minimum Maximal Matching, Chromatic Number, (l-)Dominating Set, Edge (l-)Dominating Set, and Connected Dominating Set. To enable this framework, we develop new editing algorithms that find the approximately-fewest edits required to bring a given graph into one of a few important graph classes (in some cases these are bicriteria algorithms which simultaneously approximate both the number of editing operations and the target parameter of the family). For bounded degeneracy, we obtain an O(r log{n})-approximation and a bicriteria (4,4)-approximation which also extends to a smoother bicriteria trade-off. For bounded treewidth, we obtain a bicriteria (O(log^{1.5} n), O(sqrt{log w}))-approximation, and for bounded pathwidth, we obtain a bicriteria (O(log^{1.5} n), O(sqrt{log w} * log n))-approximation. For treedepth 2 (related to bounded expansion), we obtain a 4-approximation. We also prove complementary hardness-of-approximation results assuming P != NP: in particular, these problems are all log-factor inapproximable, except the last which is not approximable below some constant factor 2 (assuming UGC).

This paper initiates the study of I/O algorithms (minimizing cache misses) from the perspective of fine-grained complexity (conditional polynomial lower bounds). Specifically, we aim to answer why sparse graph problems are so hard, and why the Longest Common Subsequence problem gets a savings of a factor of the size of cache times the length of a cache line, but no more. We take the reductions and techniques from complexity and fine-grained complexity and apply them to the I/O model to generate new (conditional) lower bounds as well as new faster algorithms. We also prove the existence of a time hierarchy for the I/O model, which motivates the fine-grained reductions. - Using fine-grained reductions, we give an algorithm for distinguishing 2 vs. 3 diameter and radius that runs in O(|E|^2/(MB)) cache misses, which for sparse graphs improves over the previous O(|V|^2/B) running time. - We give new reductions from radius and diameter to Wiener index and median. These reductions are new in both the RAM and I/O models. - We show meaningful reductions between problems that have linear-time solutions in the RAM model. The reductions use low I/O complexity (typically O(n/B)), and thus help to finely capture between "I/O linear time" O(n/B) and RAM linear time O(n). - We generate new I/O assumptions based on the difficulty of improving sparse graph problem running times in the I/O model. We create conjectures that the current best known algorithms for Single Source Shortest Paths (SSSP), diameter, and radius are optimal. - From these I/O-model assumptions, we show that many of the known reductions in the word-RAM model can naturally extend to hold in the I/O model as well (e.g., a lower bound on the I/O complexity of Longest Common Subsequence that matches the best known running time). - We prove an analog of the Time Hierarchy Theorem in the I/O model, further motivating the study of fine-grained algorithmic differences.

The red-blue pebble game was formulated in the 1980s~\citeHK81 to model the I/O complexity of algorithms on a two-level memory hierarchy. Given a directed acyclic graph representing computations (vertices) and their dependencies (edges), the red-blue pebble game allows sequentially adding, removing, and recoloring red or blue pebbles according to a few rules, where red pebbles represent data in cache (fast memory) and blue pebbles represent data on disk (slow, external memory). Specifically, a vertex can be newly pebbled red if and only if all of its predecessors currently have a red pebble; pebbles can always be removed; and pebbles can be recolored between red and blue (corresponding to reading or writing data between disk and cache, also called I/Os or memory transfers). Given an upper bound on the number of red pebbles at any time (the cache size), the goal is to compute a game execution with the fewest pebble recolorings (memory transfers) that finish with pebbles on a specified subset of nodes (outputs get computed). In this paper, we investigate the complexity of computing this trade-off between red-pebble limit (cache size) and number of recolorings (memory transfers) in general DAGs. First we prove this problem PSPACE-complete through an extension of the proof PSPACE-hardness of black pebbling complexity~\citeGLT80. Second, we consider a natural restriction on the red-blue pebble game to forbid pebble deletions, or equivalently, forbid discarding data from cache without first writing it to disk. This assumption both simplifies the model and immediately places the trade-off computation problem within NP. Unfortunately, we show that even this restricted version is NP-complete. Finally, we show that the trade-off problem parameterized by the number of transitions is W[1]-hard, meaning that there is likely no algorithm running in a fixed polynomial for constant number of transitions.

Systems that require programs to share the cache such as shared-memory systems, multicore architectures, and time-sharing systems are ubiquitous in modern computing. Moreover, practitioners have observed that the cache behavior of an algorithm is often critical to its overall performance. Despite the increasing popularity of systems where programs share a cache, the theoretical behavior of most algorithms is not yet well understood. There is a gap between our knowledge about how algorithms perform in a static cache versus a dynamic cache where the amount of memory available to a given program fluctuates. Cache-adaptive analysis is a method of analyzing how well algorithms use the cache in the face of changing memory size. Bender ηl showed that optimal cache-adaptivity does not follow from cache-optimality in a static cache. Specifically, they proved that some cache-optimal algorithms in a static cache are suboptimal when subject to certain memory profiles (patterns of memory fluctuations). For example, the canonical cache-oblivious divide-and-conquer formulation of Strassen's algorithm for matrix multiplication is suboptimal in the cache-adaptive model because it does a linear scan to add submatrices together. In this paper, we introduce scan hiding, the first technique for converting a class of non-cache-adaptive algorithms with linear scans to optimally cache-adaptive variants. We work through a concrete example of scan-hiding on Strassen's algorithm, a sub-cubic algorithm for matrix multiplication that involves linear scans at each level of its recursive structure. All of the currently known sub-cubic algorithms for matrix multiplication include linear scans, however, so our technique applies to a large class of algorithms.