9,382 research outputs found
Overcommitment in Cloud Services -- Bin packing with Chance Constraints
This paper considers a traditional problem of resource allocation, scheduling
jobs on machines. One such recent application is cloud computing, where jobs
arrive in an online fashion with capacity requirements and need to be
immediately scheduled on physical machines in data centers. It is often
observed that the requested capacities are not fully utilized, hence offering
an opportunity to employ an overcommitment policy, i.e., selling resources
beyond capacity. Setting the right overcommitment level can induce a
significant cost reduction for the cloud provider, while only inducing a very
low risk of violating capacity constraints. We introduce and study a model that
quantifies the value of overcommitment by modeling the problem as a bin packing
with chance constraints. We then propose an alternative formulation that
transforms each chance constraint into a submodular function. We show that our
model captures the risk pooling effect and can guide scheduling and
overcommitment decisions. We also develop a family of online algorithms that
are intuitive, easy to implement and provide a constant factor guarantee from
optimal. Finally, we calibrate our model using realistic workload data, and
test our approach in a practical setting. Our analysis and experiments
illustrate the benefit of overcommitment in cloud services, and suggest a cost
reduction of 1.5% to 17% depending on the provider's risk tolerance
An ant colony algorithm for the sequential testing problem under precedence constraints.
We consider the problem of minimum cost sequential
testing of a series (parallel) system under precedence
constraints that can be modeled as a nonlinear integer program.
We develop and implement an ant colony algorithm for the
problem. We demonstrate the performance of this algorithm
for special type of instances for which the optimal solutions
can be found in polynomial time. In addition, we compare the
performance of the algorithm with a special branch and bound
algorithm for general instances. The ant colony algorithm is
shown to be particularly effective for larger instances of the
problem
Separable Convex Optimization with Nested Lower and Upper Constraints
We study a convex resource allocation problem in which lower and upper bounds
are imposed on partial sums of allocations. This model is linked to a large
range of applications, including production planning, speed optimization,
stratified sampling, support vector machines, portfolio management, and
telecommunications. We propose an efficient gradient-free divide-and-conquer
algorithm, which uses monotonicity arguments to generate valid bounds from the
recursive calls, and eliminate linking constraints based on the information
from sub-problems. This algorithm does not need strict convexity or
differentiability. It produces an -approximate solution for the
continuous problem in time
and an integer solution in time, where is
the number of decision variables, is the number of constraints, and is
the resource bound. A complexity of is also achieved
for the linear and quadratic cases. These are the best complexities known to
date for this important problem class. Our experimental analyses confirm the
good performance of the method, which produces optimal solutions for problems
with up to 1,000,000 variables in a few seconds. Promising applications to the
support vector ordinal regression problem are also investigated
"Rotterdam econometrics": publications of the econometric institute 1956-2005
This paper contains a list of all publications over the period 1956-2005, as reported in the Rotterdam Econometric Institute Reprint series during 1957-2005.
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