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Simple, Deterministic, Constant-Round Coloring in the Congested Clique

We settle the complexity of the $(Δ+1)$-coloring and $(Δ+1)$-list coloring problems in the CONGESTED CLIQUE model by presenting a simple deterministic algorithm for both problems running in a constant number of rounds. This matches the complexity of the recent breakthrough randomized constant-round $(Δ+1)$-list coloring algorithm due to Chang et al. (PODC'19), and significantly improves upon the state-of-the-art $O(\log Δ)$-round deterministic $(Δ+1)$-coloring bound of Parter (ICALP'18). A remarkable property of our algorithm is its simplicity. Whereas the state-of-the-art randomized algorithms for this problem are based on the quite involved local coloring algorithm of Chang et al. (STOC'18), our algorithm can be described in just a few lines. At a high level, it applies a careful derandomization of a recursive procedure which partitions the nodes and their respective palettes into separate bins. We show that after $O(1)$ recursion steps, the remaining uncolored subgraph within each bin has linear size, and thus can be solved locally by collecting it to a single node. This algorithm can also be implemented in the Massively Parallel Computation (MPC) model provided that each machine has linear (in $n$, the number of nodes in the input graph) space. We also show an extension of our algorithm to the MPC regime in which machines have sublinear space: we present the first deterministic $(Δ+1)$-list coloring algorithm designed for sublinear-space MPC, which runs in $O(\log Δ+ \log\log n)$ rounds.