  Typically, nonlinear Support Vector Machines (SVMs) produce significantly
higher classification quality when compared to linear ones but, at the same
time, their computational complexity is prohibitive for large-scale datasets:
this drawback is essentially related to the necessity to store and manipulate
large, dense and unstructured kernel matrices. Despite the fact that at the
core of training a SVM there is a \textit{simple} convex optimization problem,
the presence of kernel matrices is responsible for dramatic performance
reduction, making SVMs unworkably slow for large problems. Aiming to an
efficient solution of large-scale nonlinear SVM problems, we propose the use of
the \textit{Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers} coupled with
\textit{Hierarchically Semi-Separable} (HSS) kernel approximations. As shown in
this work, the detailed analysis of the interaction among their algorithmic
components unveils a particularly efficient framework and indeed, the presented
experimental results demonstrate a significant speed-up when compared to the
\textit{state-of-the-art} nonlinear SVM libraries (without significantly
affecting the classification accuracy).
