PARAFAC algorithms for large-scale problems

Anh Huy Phan, Andrzej Cichocki

Abstract: Parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) is a tensor (multiway array) factorization method which allows to find hidden factors (component matrices) from a multidimensional data. Most of the existing algorithms for the PARAFAC, especially the alternating least squares (ALS) algorithm need to compute Khatri–Rao products of tall factors and multiplication of large matrices, and due to this require high computational cost and large memory and are not suitable for very large-scale-problems. Hence, PARAFAC for large-scale data tensors is still a challenging problem. In this paper, we propose a new approach based on a modified ALS algorithm which computes Hadamard products, instead Khatri–Rao products, and employs relatively small matrices. The new algorithms are able to process extremely large-scale tensors with billions of entries. Extensive experiments confirm the validity and high performance of the developed algorithm in comparison with other well-known algorithms.