807 research outputs found
Truly Online Paging with Locality of Reference
The competitive analysis fails to model locality of reference in the online
paging problem. To deal with it, Borodin et. al. introduced the access graph
model, which attempts to capture the locality of reference. However, the access
graph model has a number of troubling aspects. The access graph has to be known
in advance to the paging algorithm and the memory required to represent the
access graph itself may be very large.
In this paper we present truly online strongly competitive paging algorithms
in the access graph model that do not have any prior information on the access
sequence. We present both deterministic and randomized algorithms. The
algorithms need only O(k log n) bits of memory, where k is the number of page
slots available and n is the size of the virtual address space. I.e.,
asymptotically no more memory than needed to store the virtual address
translation table.
We also observe that our algorithms adapt themselves to temporal changes in
the locality of reference. We model temporal changes in the locality of
reference by extending the access graph model to the so called extended access
graph model, in which many vertices of the graph can correspond to the same
virtual page. We define a measure for the rate of change in the locality of
reference in G denoted by Delta(G). We then show our algorithms remain strongly
competitive as long as Delta(G) >= (1+ epsilon)k, and no truly online algorithm
can be strongly competitive on a class of extended access graphs that includes
all graphs G with Delta(G) >= k- o(k).Comment: 37 pages. Preliminary version appeared in FOCS '9
On-Line Paging against Adversarially Biased Random Inputs
In evaluating an algorithm, worst-case analysis can be overly pessimistic.
Average-case analysis can be overly optimistic. An intermediate approach is to
show that an algorithm does well on a broad class of input distributions.
Koutsoupias and Papadimitriou recently analyzed the least-recently-used (LRU)
paging strategy in this manner, analyzing its performance on an input sequence
generated by a so-called diffuse adversary -- one that must choose each request
probabilitistically so that no page is chosen with probability more than some
fixed epsilon>0. They showed that LRU achieves the optimal competitive ratio
(for deterministic on-line algorithms), but they didn't determine the actual
ratio.
In this paper we estimate the optimal ratios within roughly a factor of two
for both deterministic strategies (e.g. least-recently-used and
first-in-first-out) and randomized strategies. Around the threshold epsilon ~
1/k (where k is the cache size), the optimal ratios are both Theta(ln k). Below
the threshold the ratios tend rapidly to O(1). Above the threshold the ratio is
unchanged for randomized strategies but tends rapidly to Theta(k) for
deterministic ones.
We also give an alternate proof of the optimality of LRU.Comment: Conference version appeared in SODA '98 as "Bounding the Diffuse
Adversary
On-Line File Caching
In the on-line file-caching problem problem, the input is a sequence of
requests for files, given on-line (one at a time). Each file has a non-negative
size and a non-negative retrieval cost. The problem is to decide which files to
keep in a fixed-size cache so as to minimize the sum of the retrieval costs for
files that are not in the cache when requested. The problem arises in web
caching by browsers and by proxies. This paper describes a natural
generalization of LRU called Landlord and gives an analysis showing that it has
an optimal performance guarantee (among deterministic on-line algorithms).
The paper also gives an analysis of the algorithm in a so-called ``loosely''
competitive model, showing that on a ``typical'' cache size, either the
performance guarantee is O(1) or the total retrieval cost is insignificant.Comment: ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (1998
Randomized online computation with high probability guarantees
We study the relationship between the competitive ratio and the tail
distribution of randomized online minimization problems. To this end, we define
a broad class of online problems that includes some of the well-studied
problems like paging, k-server and metrical task systems on finite metrics, and
show that for these problems it is possible to obtain, given an algorithm with
constant expected competitive ratio, another algorithm that achieves the same
solution quality up to an arbitrarily small constant error a with high
probability; the "high probability" statement is in terms of the optimal cost.
Furthermore, we show that our assumptions are tight in the sense that removing
any of them allows for a counterexample to the theorem. In addition, there are
examples of other problems not covered by our definition, where similar high
probability results can be obtained.Comment: 20 pages, 2 figure
The K-Server Dual and Loose Competitiveness for Paging
This paper has two results. The first is based on the surprising observation
that the well-known ``least-recently-used'' paging algorithm and the
``balance'' algorithm for weighted caching are linear-programming primal-dual
algorithms. This observation leads to a strategy (called ``Greedy-Dual'') that
generalizes them both and has an optimal performance guarantee for weighted
caching.
For the second result, the paper presents empirical studies of paging
algorithms, documenting that in practice, on ``typical'' cache sizes and
sequences, the performance of paging strategies are much better than their
worst-case analyses in the standard model suggest. The paper then presents
theoretical results that support and explain this. For example: on any input
sequence, with almost all cache sizes, either the performance guarantee of
least-recently-used is O(log k) or the fault rate (in an absolute sense) is
insignificant.
Both of these results are strengthened and generalized in``On-line File
Caching'' (1998).Comment: conference version: "On-Line Caching as Cache Size Varies", SODA
(1991
Online Service with Delay
In this paper, we introduce the online service with delay problem. In this
problem, there are points in a metric space that issue service requests
over time, and a server that serves these requests. The goal is to minimize the
sum of distance traveled by the server and the total delay in serving the
requests. This problem models the fundamental tradeoff between batching
requests to improve locality and reducing delay to improve response time, that
has many applications in operations management, operating systems, logistics,
supply chain management, and scheduling.
Our main result is to show a poly-logarithmic competitive ratio for the
online service with delay problem. This result is obtained by an algorithm that
we call the preemptive service algorithm. The salient feature of this algorithm
is a process called preemptive service, which uses a novel combination of
(recursive) time forwarding and spatial exploration on a metric space. We hope
this technique will be useful for related problems such as reordering buffer
management, online TSP, vehicle routing, etc. We also generalize our results to
servers.Comment: 30 pages, 11 figures, Appeared in 49th ACM Symposium on Theory of
Computing (STOC), 201
Probabilistic alternatives for competitive analysis
In the last 20 years competitive analysis has become the main tool for analyzing the quality of online algorithms. Despite of this, competitive analysis has also been criticized: it sometimes cannot discriminate between algorithms that exhibit significantly different empirical behavior or it even favors an algorithm that is worse from an empirical point of view. Therefore, there have been several approaches to circumvent these drawbacks. In this survey, we discuss probabilistic alternatives for competitive analysis.operations research and management science;
Design of competitive paging algorithms with good behaviour in practice
Paging is one of the most prominent problems in the field of online algorithms. We have to serve a sequence of page requests using a cache that can hold up to k pages. If the currently requested page is in cache we have a cache hit, otherwise we say that a cache miss occurs, and the requested page needs to be loaded into the cache. The goal is to minimize the number of cache misses by providing a good page-replacement strategy. This problem is part of memory-management when data is stored in a two-level memory hierarchy, more precisely a small and fast memory (cache) and a slow but large memory (disk). The most important application area is the virtual memory management of operating systems. Accessed pages are either already in the RAM or need to be loaded from the hard disk into the RAM using expensive I/O. The time needed to access the RAM is insignificant compared to an I/O operation which takes several milliseconds.
The traditional evaluation framework for online algorithms is competitive analysis where the online algorithm is compared to the optimal offline solution. A shortcoming of competitive analysis consists of its too pessimistic worst-case guarantees. For example LRU has a theoretical competitive ratio of k but in practice this ratio rarely exceeds the value 4.
Reducing the gap between theory and practice has been a hot research issue during the last years. More recent evaluation models have been used to prove that LRU is an optimal online algorithm or part of a class of optimal algorithms respectively, which was motivated by the assumption that LRU is one of the best algorithms in practice. Most of the newer models make LRU-friendly assumptions regarding the input, thus not leaving much room for new algorithms.
Only few works in the field of online paging have introduced new algorithms which can compete with LRU as regards the small number of cache misses.
In the first part of this thesis we study strongly competitive randomized paging algorithms, i.e. algorithms with optimal competitive guarantees. Although the tight bound for the competitive ratio has been known for decades, current algorithms matching this bound are complex and have high running times and memory requirements. We propose the algorithm OnlineMin which processes a page request in O(log k/log log k) time in the worst case. The best previously known solution requires O(k^2) time.
Usually the memory requirement of a paging algorithm is measured by the maximum number of pages that the algorithm keeps track of. Any algorithm stores information about the k pages in the cache. In addition it can also store information about pages not in cache, denoted bookmarks. We answer the open question of Bein et al. '07 whether strongly competitive randomized paging algorithms using only o(k) bookmarks exist or not. To do so we modify the Partition algorithm of McGeoch and Sleator '85 which has an unbounded bookmark complexity, and obtain Partition2 which uses O(k/log k) bookmarks.
In the second part we extract ideas from theoretical analysis of randomized paging algorithms in order to design deterministic algorithms that perform well in practice. We refine competitive analysis by introducing the attack rate
parameter r, which ranges between 1 and k. We show that r is a tight bound on the competitive ratio of deterministic algorithms.
We give empirical evidence that r is usually much smaller than k and thus r-competitive algorithms have a reasonable performance on real-world traces. By introducing the r-competitive priority-based algorithm class OnOPT we obtain a collection of promising algorithms to beat the LRU-standard. We single out the new algorithm RDM and show that it outperforms LRU and some of its variants on a wide range of real-world traces.
Since RDM is more complex than LRU one may think at first sight that the gain in terms of lowering the number of cache misses is ruined by high runtime for processing pages. We engineer a fast implementation of RDM, and compare it
to LRU and the very fast FIFO algorithm in an overall evaluation scheme, where we measure the runtime of the algorithms and add penalties for each cache miss.
Experimental results show that for realistic penalties RDM still outperforms these two algorithms even if we grant the competitors an idealistic runtime of 0
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