21 research outputs found
Online Knapsack Problem under Expected Capacity Constraint
Online knapsack problem is considered, where items arrive in a sequential
fashion that have two attributes; value and weight. Each arriving item has to
be accepted or rejected on its arrival irrevocably. The objective is to
maximize the sum of the value of the accepted items such that the sum of their
weights is below a budget/capacity. Conventionally a hard budget/capacity
constraint is considered, for which variety of results are available. In modern
applications, e.g., in wireless networks, data centres, cloud computing, etc.,
enforcing the capacity constraint in expectation is sufficient. With this
motivation, we consider the knapsack problem with an expected capacity
constraint. For the special case of knapsack problem, called the secretary
problem, where the weight of each item is unity, we propose an algorithm whose
probability of selecting any one of the optimal items is equal to and
provide a matching lower bound. For the general knapsack problem, we propose an
algorithm whose competitive ratio is shown to be that is significantly
better than the best known competitive ratio of for the knapsack
problem with the hard capacity constraint.Comment: To appear in IEEE INFOCOM 2018, April 2018, Honolulu H
Greedy D-Approximation Algorithm for Covering with Arbitrary Constraints and Submodular Cost
This paper describes a simple greedy D-approximation algorithm for any
covering problem whose objective function is submodular and non-decreasing, and
whose feasible region can be expressed as the intersection of arbitrary (closed
upwards) covering constraints, each of which constrains at most D variables of
the problem. (A simple example is Vertex Cover, with D = 2.) The algorithm
generalizes previous approximation algorithms for fundamental covering problems
and online paging and caching problems
Optimal Posted Prices for Online Cloud Resource Allocation
We study online resource allocation in a cloud computing platform, through a
posted pricing mechanism: The cloud provider publishes a unit price for each
resource type, which may vary over time; upon arrival at the cloud system, a
cloud user either takes the current prices, renting resources to execute its
job, or refuses the prices without running its job there. We design pricing
functions based on the current resource utilization ratios, in a wide array of
demand-supply relationships and resource occupation durations, and prove
worst-case competitive ratios of the pricing functions in terms of social
welfare. In the basic case of a single-type, non-recycled resource (i.e.,
allocated resources are not later released for reuse), we prove that our
pricing function design is optimal, in that any other pricing function can only
lead to a worse competitive ratio. Insights obtained from the basic cases are
then used to generalize the pricing functions to more realistic cloud systems
with multiple types of resources, where a job occupies allocated resources for
a number of time slots till completion, upon which time the resources are
returned back to the cloud resource pool
Online Mixed Packing and Covering
In many problems, the inputs arrive over time, and must be dealt with
irrevocably when they arrive. Such problems are online problems. A common
method of solving online problems is to first solve the corresponding linear
program, and then round the fractional solution online to obtain an integral
solution.
We give algorithms for solving linear programs with mixed packing and
covering constraints online. We first consider mixed packing and covering
linear programs, where packing constraints are given offline and covering
constraints are received online. The objective is to minimize the maximum
multiplicative factor by which any packing constraint is violated, while
satisfying the covering constraints. No prior sublinear competitive algorithms
are known for this problem. We give the first such --- a
polylogarithmic-competitive algorithm for solving mixed packing and covering
linear programs online. We also show a nearly tight lower bound.
Our techniques for the upper bound use an exponential penalty function in
conjunction with multiplicative updates. While exponential penalty functions
are used previously to solve linear programs offline approximately, offline
algorithms know the constraints beforehand and can optimize greedily. In
contrast, when constraints arrive online, updates need to be more complex.
We apply our techniques to solve two online fixed-charge problems with
congestion. These problems are motivated by applications in machine scheduling
and facility location. The linear program for these problems is more
complicated than mixed packing and covering, and presents unique challenges. We
show that our techniques combined with a randomized rounding procedure give
polylogarithmic-competitive integral solutions. These problems generalize
online set-cover, for which there is a polylogarithmic lower bound. Hence, our
results are close to tight
An Online Auction Mechanism for Dynamic Virtual Cluster Provisioning in Geo-Distributed Clouds
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