20,862 research outputs found
Malleable Scheduling Beyond Identical Machines
In malleable job scheduling, jobs can be executed simultaneously on multiple machines with the processing time depending on the number of allocated machines. Jobs are required to be executed non-preemptively and in unison, in the sense that they occupy, during their execution, the same time interval over all the machines of the allocated set. In this work, we study generalizations of malleable job scheduling inspired by standard scheduling on unrelated machines. Specifically, we introduce a general model of malleable job scheduling, where each machine has a (possibly different) speed for each job, and the processing time of a job j on a set of allocated machines S depends on the total speed of S for j. For machines with unrelated speeds, we show that the optimal makespan cannot be approximated within a factor less than e/(e-1), unless P = NP. On the positive side, we present polynomial-time algorithms with approximation ratios 2e/(e-1) for machines with unrelated speeds, 3 for machines with uniform speeds, and 7/3 for restricted assignments on identical machines. Our algorithms are based on deterministic LP rounding and result in sparse schedules, in the sense that each machine shares at most one job with other machines. We also prove lower bounds on the integrality gap of 1+phi for unrelated speeds (phi is the golden ratio) and 2 for uniform speeds and restricted assignments. To indicate the generality of our approach, we show that it also yields constant factor approximation algorithms (i) for minimizing the sum of weighted completion times; and (ii) a variant where we determine the effective speed of a set of allocated machines based on the L_p norm of their speeds
Framework for sustainable TVET-Teacher Education Program in Malaysia Public Universities
Studies had stated that less attention was given to the education aspect, such as
teaching and learning in planning for improving the TVET system. Due to the 21st
Century context, the current paradigm of teaching for the TVET educators also has
been reported to be fatal and need to be shifted. All these disadvantages reported
hindering the country from achieving the 5th strategy in the Strategic Plan for
Vocational Education Transformation to transform TVET system as a whole.
Therefore, this study aims to develop a framework for sustainable TVET Teacher
Education program in Malaysia. This study had adopted an Exploratory Sequential
Mix-Method design, which involves a semi-structured interview (phase one) and
survey method (phase two). Nine experts had involved in phase one chosen by using
Purposive Sampling Technique. As in phase two, 118 TVET-TE program lecturers
were selected as the survey sample chosen through random sampling method. After
data analysis in phase one (thematic analysis) and phase two (Principal Component
Analysis), eight domains and 22 elements have been identified for the framework for
sustainable TVET-TE program in Malaysia. This framework was identified to embed
the elements of 21st Century Education, thus filling the gap in this research. The
research findings also indicate that the developed framework was unidimensional and
valid for the development and research regarding TVET-TE program in Malaysia.
Lastly, it is in the hope that this research can be a guide for the nations in producing a
quality TVET teacher in the future
Co-Scheduling Algorithms for High-Throughput Workload Execution
This paper investigates co-scheduling algorithms for processing a set of
parallel applications. Instead of executing each application one by one, using
a maximum degree of parallelism for each of them, we aim at scheduling several
applications concurrently. We partition the original application set into a
series of packs, which are executed one by one. A pack comprises several
applications, each of them with an assigned number of processors, with the
constraint that the total number of processors assigned within a pack does not
exceed the maximum number of available processors. The objective is to
determine a partition into packs, and an assignment of processors to
applications, that minimize the sum of the execution times of the packs. We
thoroughly study the complexity of this optimization problem, and propose
several heuristics that exhibit very good performance on a variety of
workloads, whose application execution times model profiles of parallel
scientific codes. We show that co-scheduling leads to to faster workload
completion time and to faster response times on average (hence increasing
system throughput and saving energy), for significant benefits over traditional
scheduling from both the user and system perspectives
The Lazy Bureaucrat Scheduling Problem
We introduce a new class of scheduling problems in which the optimization is
performed by the worker (single ``machine'') who performs the tasks. A typical
worker's objective is to minimize the amount of work he does (he is ``lazy''),
or more generally, to schedule as inefficiently (in some sense) as possible.
The worker is subject to the constraint that he must be busy when there is work
that he can do; we make this notion precise both in the preemptive and
nonpreemptive settings. The resulting class of ``perverse'' scheduling
problems, which we denote ``Lazy Bureaucrat Problems,'' gives rise to a rich
set of new questions that explore the distinction between maximization and
minimization in computing optimal schedules.Comment: 19 pages, 2 figures, Latex. To appear, Information and Computatio
A Fully Polynomial-Time Approximation Scheme for Speed Scaling with Sleep State
We study classical deadline-based preemptive scheduling of tasks in a
computing environment equipped with both dynamic speed scaling and sleep state
capabilities: Each task is specified by a release time, a deadline and a
processing volume, and has to be scheduled on a single, speed-scalable
processor that is supplied with a sleep state. In the sleep state, the
processor consumes no energy, but a constant wake-up cost is required to
transition back to the active state. In contrast to speed scaling alone, the
addition of a sleep state makes it sometimes beneficial to accelerate the
processing of tasks in order to transition the processor to the sleep state for
longer amounts of time and incur further energy savings. The goal is to output
a feasible schedule that minimizes the energy consumption. Since the
introduction of the problem by Irani et al. [16], its exact computational
complexity has been repeatedly posed as an open question (see e.g. [2,8,15]).
The currently best known upper and lower bounds are a 4/3-approximation
algorithm and NP-hardness due to [2] and [2,17], respectively. We close the
aforementioned gap between the upper and lower bound on the computational
complexity of speed scaling with sleep state by presenting a fully
polynomial-time approximation scheme for the problem. The scheme is based on a
transformation to a non-preemptive variant of the problem, and a discretization
that exploits a carefully defined lexicographical ordering among schedules
New bounds for truthful scheduling on two unrelated selfish machines
We consider the minimum makespan problem for tasks and two unrelated
parallel selfish machines. Let be the best approximation ratio of
randomized monotone scale-free algorithms. This class contains the most
efficient algorithms known for truthful scheduling on two machines. We propose
a new formulation for , as well as upper and lower bounds on
based on this formulation. For the lower bound, we exploit pointwise
approximations of cumulative distribution functions (CDFs). For the upper
bound, we construct randomized algorithms using distributions with piecewise
rational CDFs. Our method improves upon the existing bounds on for small
. In particular, we obtain almost tight bounds for showing that
.Comment: 28 pages, 3 tables, 1 figure. Theory Comput Syst (2019
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
Scheduling Monotone Moldable Jobs in Linear Time
A moldable job is a job that can be executed on an arbitrary number of
processors, and whose processing time depends on the number of processors
allotted to it. A moldable job is monotone if its work doesn't decrease for an
increasing number of allotted processors. We consider the problem of scheduling
monotone moldable jobs to minimize the makespan.
We argue that for certain compact input encodings a polynomial algorithm has
a running time polynomial in n and log(m), where n is the number of jobs and m
is the number of machines. We describe how monotony of jobs can be used to
counteract the increased problem complexity that arises from compact encodings,
and give tight bounds on the approximability of the problem with compact
encoding: it is NP-hard to solve optimally, but admits a PTAS.
The main focus of this work are efficient approximation algorithms. We
describe different techniques to exploit the monotony of the jobs for better
running times, and present a (3/2+{\epsilon})-approximate algorithm whose
running time is polynomial in log(m) and 1/{\epsilon}, and only linear in the
number n of jobs
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