25 research outputs found
A QPTAS for the General Scheduling Problem with Identical Release Dates
The General Scheduling Problem (GSP) generalizes scheduling problems with sum of cost objectives such as weighted flow time and weighted tardiness. Given a set of jobs with processing times, release dates, and job dependent cost functions, we seek to find a minimum cost preemptive schedule on a single machine. The best known algorithm for this problem and also for weighted flow time/tardiness is an O(loglog P)-approximation (where P denotes the range of the job processing times), while the best lower bound shows only strong NP-hardness. When release dates are identical there is also a gap: the problem remains strongly NP-hard and the best known approximation algorithm has a ratio of e+epsilon (running in quasi-polynomial time). We reduce the latter gap by giving a QPTAS if the numbers in the input are quasi-polynomially bounded, ruling out the existence of an APX-hardness proof unless NPsubseteq DTIME(2^polylog(n)). Our techniques are based on the QPTAS known for the UFP-Cover problem, a particular case of GSP where we must pick a subset of intervals (jobs) on the real line with associated heights and costs. If an interval is selected, its height will help cover a given demand on any point contained within the interval. We reduce our problem to a generalization of UFP-Cover and use a sophisticated divide-and-conquer procedure with interdependent non-symmetric subproblems.
We also present a pseudo-polynomial time approximation scheme for two variants of UFP-Cover. For the case of agreeable intervals we give an algorithm based on a new dynamic programming approach which might be useful for other problems of this type. The second one is a resource augmentation setting where we are allowed to slightly enlarge each interval
How Unsplittable-Flow-Covering helps Scheduling with Job-Dependent Cost Functions
Generalizing many well-known and natural scheduling problems, scheduling with
job-specific cost functions has gained a lot of attention recently. In this
setting, each job incurs a cost depending on its completion time, given by a
private cost function, and one seeks to schedule the jobs to minimize the total
sum of these costs. The framework captures many important scheduling objectives
such as weighted flow time or weighted tardiness. Still, the general case as
well as the mentioned special cases are far from being very well understood
yet, even for only one machine. Aiming for better general understanding of this
problem, in this paper we focus on the case of uniform job release dates on one
machine for which the state of the art is a 4-approximation algorithm. This is
true even for a special case that is equivalent to the covering version of the
well-studied and prominent unsplittable flow on a path problem, which is
interesting in its own right. For that covering problem, we present a
quasi-polynomial time -approximation algorithm that yields an
-approximation for the above scheduling problem. Moreover, for
the latter we devise the best possible resource augmentation result regarding
speed: a polynomial time algorithm which computes a solution with \emph{optimal
}cost at speedup. Finally, we present an elegant QPTAS for the
special case where the cost functions of the jobs fall into at most
many classes. This algorithm allows the jobs even to have up to many
distinct release dates.Comment: 2 pages, 1 figur
How unsplittable-flow-covering helps scheduling with job-dependent cost functions
Generalizing many well-known and natural scheduling problems, scheduling with job-specific cost functions has gained a lot of attention recently. In this setting, each job incurs a cost depending on its completion time, given by a private cost function, and one seeks to schedule the jobs to minimize the total sum of these costs. The framework captures many important scheduling objectives such as weighted flow time or weighted tardiness. Still, the general case as well as the mentioned special cases are far from being very well understood yet, even for only one machine. Aiming for better general understanding of this problem, in this paper we focus on the case of uniform job release dates on one machine for which the state of the art is a 4-approximation algorithm. This is true even for a special case that is equivalent to the covering version of the well-studied and prominent unsplittable flow on a path problem, which is interesting in its own right. For that covering problem, we present a quasi-polynomial time (1+ε)-approximation algorithm that yields an(e+ε)-approximation for the above scheduling problem. Moreover, for the latter we devise the best possible resource augmentation result regarding speed: a polynomial time algorithm which computes a solution withoptimalcost at1+εspeedup. Finally, we present an elegant QPTAS for the special case where the cost functions of the jobs fall into at mostlognmany classes. This algorithm allows the jobs even to have up tolognmany distinct release dates. All proposed quasi-polynomial time algorithms require the input data to be quasi-polynomially bounded
The Geometry of Scheduling
We consider the following general scheduling problem: The input consists of n
jobs, each with an arbitrary release time, size, and a monotone function
specifying the cost incurred when the job is completed at a particular time.
The objective is to find a preemptive schedule of minimum aggregate cost. This
problem formulation is general enough to include many natural scheduling
objectives, such as weighted flow, weighted tardiness, and sum of flow squared.
Our main result is a randomized polynomial-time algorithm with an approximation
ratio O(log log nP), where P is the maximum job size. We also give an O(1)
approximation in the special case when all jobs have identical release times.
The main idea is to reduce this scheduling problem to a particular geometric
set-cover problem which is then solved using the local ratio technique and
Varadarajan's quasi-uniform sampling technique. This general algorithmic
approach improves the best known approximation ratios by at least an
exponential factor (and much more in some cases) for essentially all of the
nontrivial common special cases of this problem. Our geometric interpretation
of scheduling may be of independent interest.Comment: Conference version in FOCS 201
Energy Efficient Scheduling of MapReduce Jobs
MapReduce is emerged as a prominent programming model for data-intensive
computation. In this work, we study power-aware MapReduce scheduling in the
speed scaling setting first introduced by Yao et al. [FOCS 1995]. We focus on
the minimization of the total weighted completion time of a set of MapReduce
jobs under a given budget of energy. Using a linear programming relaxation of
our problem, we derive a polynomial time constant-factor approximation
algorithm. We also propose a convex programming formulation that we combine
with standard list scheduling policies, and we evaluate their performance using
simulations.Comment: 22 page
Geometry of Scheduling on Multiple Machines
We consider the following general scheduling problem: there are m identical machines and n jobs all released at time 0. Each job j has a processing time pj, and an arbitrary non-decreasing function fj that specifies the cost incurred for j, for each possible completion time. The goal is to find a preemptive migratory schedule of minimum cost. This models several natural objectives such as weighted norm of completion time, weighted tardiness and much more.
We give the first O(1) approximation algorithm for this problem, improving upon the O(loglognP) bound due to Moseley (2019). To do this, we first view the job-cover inequalities of Moseley geometrically, to reduce the problem to that of covering demands on a line by rectangular and triangular capacity profiles. Due to the non-uniform capacities of triangles, directly using quasi-uniform sampling loses a O(loglogP) factor, so a second idea is to adapt it to our setting to only lose an O(1) factor. Our ideas for covering points with non-uniform capacity profiles (which have not been studied before) may be of independent int
Non-uniform Geometric Set Cover and Scheduling on Multiple Machines
We consider the following general scheduling problem studied recently by
Moseley. There are jobs, all released at time , where job has size
and an associated arbitrary non-decreasing cost function of its
completion time. The goal is to find a schedule on machines with minimum
total cost. We give an approximation for the problem, improving upon the
previous bound ( is the maximum to minimum size ratio),
and resolving the open question of Moseley.
We first note that the scheduling problem can be reduced to a clean geometric
set cover problem where points on a line with arbitrary demands, must be
covered by a minimum cost collection of given intervals with non-uniform
capacity profiles. Unfortunately, current techniques for such problems based on
knapsack cover inequalities and low union complexity, completely lose the
geometric structure in the non-uniform capacity profiles and incur at least an
loss.
To this end, we consider general covering problems with non-uniform
capacities, and give a new method to handle capacities in a way that completely
preserves their geometric structure. This allows us to use sophisticated
geometric ideas in a black-box way to avoid the loss in
previous approaches. In addition to the scheduling problem above, we use this
approach to obtain or inverse Ackermann type bounds for several basic
capacitated covering problems
A Water-Filling Primal-Dual Algorithm for Approximating Non-Linear Covering Problems
Obtaining strong linear relaxations of capacitated covering problems constitute a significant technical challenge even for simple settings. For one of the most basic cases, the Knapsack-Cover (Min-Knapsack) problem, the relaxation based on knapsack-cover inequalities has an integrality gap of 2. These inequalities are exploited in more general problems, many of which admit primal-dual approximation algorithms.
Inspired by problems from power and transport systems, we introduce a general setting in which items can be taken fractionally to cover a given demand. The cost incurred by an item is given by an arbitrary non-decreasing function of the chosen fraction. We generalize the knapsack-cover inequalities to this setting an use them to obtain a (2+?)-approximate primal-dual algorithm. Our procedure has a natural interpretation as a bucket-filling algorithm which effectively overcomes the difficulties implied by having different slopes in the cost functions. More precisely, when some superior segment of an item presents a low slope, it helps to increase the priority of inferior segments. We also present a rounding algorithm with an approximation guarantee of 2.
We generalize our algorithm to the Unsplittable Flow-Cover problem on a line, also for the setting of fractional items with non-linear costs. For this problem we obtain a (4+?)-approximation algorithm in polynomial time, almost matching the 4-approximation algorithm known for the classical setting