  In this paper, we demonstrate, both theoretically and by numerical examples,
that adding a local prediction component to the update rule can significantly
improve the convergence rate of distributed averaging algorithms. We focus on
the case where the local predictor is a linear combination of the node's two
previous values (i.e., two memory taps), and our update rule computes a
combination of the predictor and the usual weighted linear combination of
values received from neighbouring nodes. We derive the optimal mixing parameter
for combining the predictor with the neighbors' values, and carry out a
theoretical analysis of the improvement in convergence rate that can be
obtained using this acceleration methodology. For a chain topology on n nodes,
this leads to a factor of n improvement over the one-step algorithm, and for a
two-dimensional grid, our approach achieves a factor of n^1/2 improvement, in
terms of the number of iterations required to reach a prescribed level of
accuracy.
