Algorithms for the Bin Packing Problem with Scenarios

This paper presents theoretical and practical results for the bin packing problem with scenarios, a generalization of the classical bin packing problem which considers the presence of uncertain scenarios, of which only one is realized. For this problem, we propose an absolute approximation algorithm whose ratio is bounded by the square root of the number of scenarios times the approximation ratio for an algorithm for the vector bin packing problem. We also show how an asymptotic polynomial-time approximation scheme is derived when the number of scenarios is constant. As a practical study of the problem, we present a branch-and-price algorithm to solve an exponential model and a variable neighborhood search heuristic. To speed up the convergence of the exact algorithm, we also consider lower bounds based on dual feasible functions. Results of these algorithms show the competence of the branch-and-price in obtaining optimal solutions for about 59% of the instances considered, while the combined heuristic and branch-and-price optimally solved 62% of the instances considered

AFPTAS results for common variants of bin packing: A new method to handle the small items

We consider two well-known natural variants of bin packing, and show that these packing problems admit asymptotic fully polynomial time approximation schemes (AFPTAS). In bin packing problems, a set of one-dimensional items of size at most 1 is to be assigned (packed) to subsets of sum at most 1 (bins). It has been known for a while that the most basic problem admits an AFPTAS. In this paper, we develop methods that allow to extend this result to other variants of bin packing. Specifically, the problems which we study in this paper, for which we design asymptotic fully polynomial time approximation schemes, are the following. The first problem is "Bin packing with cardinality constraints", where a parameter k is given, such that a bin may contain up to k items. The goal is to minimize the number of bins used. The second problem is "Bin packing with rejection", where every item has a rejection penalty associated with it. An item needs to be either packed to a bin or rejected, and the goal is to minimize the number of used bins plus the total rejection penalty of unpacked items. This resolves the complexity of two important variants of the bin packing problem. Our approximation schemes use a novel method for packing the small items. This new method is the core of the improved running times of our schemes over the running times of the previous results, which are only asymptotic polynomial time approximation schemes (APTAS)

Optimal Placement Algorithms for Virtual Machines

Cloud computing provides a computing platform for the users to meet their demands in an efficient, cost-effective way. Virtualization technologies are used in the clouds to aid the efficient usage of hardware. Virtual machines (VMs) are utilized to satisfy the user needs and are placed on physical machines (PMs) of the cloud for effective usage of hardware resources and electricity in the cloud. Optimizing the number of PMs used helps in cutting down the power consumption by a substantial amount. In this paper, we present an optimal technique to map virtual machines to physical machines (nodes) such that the number of required nodes is minimized. We provide two approaches based on linear programming and quadratic programming techniques that significantly improve over the existing theoretical bounds and efficiently solve the problem of virtual machine (VM) placement in data centers

Vector Bin Packing with Multiple-Choice

We consider a variant of bin packing called multiple-choice vector bin packing. In this problem we are given a set of items, where each item can be selected in one of several $D$-dimensional incarnations. We are also given $T$ bin types, each with its own cost and $D$-dimensional size. Our goal is to pack the items in a set of bins of minimum overall cost. The problem is motivated by scheduling in networks with guaranteed quality of service (QoS), but due to its general formulation it has many other applications as well. We present an approximation algorithm that is guaranteed to produce a solution whose cost is about $\ln D$ times the optimum. For the running time to be polynomial we require $D=O(1)$ and $T=O(\log n)$. This extends previous results for vector bin packing, in which each item has a single incarnation and there is only one bin type. To obtain our result we also present a PTAS for the multiple-choice version of multidimensional knapsack, where we are given only one bin and the goal is to pack a maximum weight set of (incarnations of) items in that bin