593 research outputs found
Load Balancing in the Non-Degenerate Slowdown Regime
We analyse Join-the-Shortest-Queue in a contemporary scaling regime known as
the Non-Degenerate Slowdown regime. Join-the-Shortest-Queue (JSQ) is a
classical load balancing policy for queueing systems with multiple parallel
servers. Parallel server queueing systems are regularly analysed and
dimensioned by diffusion approximations achieved in the Halfin-Whitt scaling
regime. However, when jobs must be dispatched to a server upon arrival, we
advocate the Non-Degenerate Slowdown regime (NDS) to compare different
load-balancing rules.
In this paper we identify novel diffusion approximation and timescale
separation that provides insights into the performance of JSQ. We calculate the
price of irrevocably dispatching jobs to servers and prove this to within 15%
(in the NDS regime) of the rules that may manoeuvre jobs between servers. We
also compare ours results for the JSQ policy with the NDS approximations of
many modern load balancing policies such as Idle-Queue-First and
Power-of--choices policies which act as low information proxies for the JSQ
policy. Our analysis leads us to construct new rules that have identical
performance to JSQ but require less communication overhead than
power-of-2-choices.Comment: Revised journal submission versio
Correction. Brownian models of open processing networks: canonical representation of workload
Due to a printing error the above mentioned article [Annals of Applied
Probability 10 (2000) 75--103, doi:10.1214/aoap/1019737665] had numerous
equations appearing incorrectly in the print version of this paper. The entire
article follows as it should have appeared. IMS apologizes to the author and
the readers for this error. A recent paper by Harrison and Van Mieghem
explained in general mathematical terms how one forms an ``equivalent workload
formulation'' of a Brownian network model. Denoting by the state vector
of the original Brownian network, one has a lower dimensional state descriptor
in the equivalent workload formulation, where can be chosen as
any basis matrix for a particular linear space. This paper considers Brownian
models for a very general class of open processing networks, and in that
context develops a more extensive interpretation of the equivalent workload
formulation, thus extending earlier work by Laws on alternate routing problems.
A linear program called the static planning problem is introduced to articulate
the notion of ``heavy traffic'' for a general open network, and the dual of
that linear program is used to define a canonical choice of the basis matrix
. To be specific, rows of the canonical are alternative basic optimal
solutions of the dual linear program. If the network data satisfy a natural
monotonicity condition, the canonical matrix is shown to be nonnegative,
and another natural condition is identified which ensures that admits a
factorization related to the notion of resource pooling.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/105051606000000583 in the
Annals of Applied Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aap/) by the Institute
of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
A Switching Fluid Limit of a Stochastic Network Under a State-Space-Collapse Inducing Control with Chattering
Routing mechanisms for stochastic networks are often designed to produce
state space collapse (SSC) in a heavy-traffic limit, i.e., to confine the
limiting process to a lower-dimensional subset of its full state space. In a
fluid limit, a control producing asymptotic SSC corresponds to an ideal sliding
mode control that forces the fluid trajectories to a lower-dimensional sliding
manifold. Within deterministic dynamical systems theory, it is well known that
sliding-mode controls can cause the system to chatter back and forth along the
sliding manifold due to delays in activation of the control. For the prelimit
stochastic system, chattering implies fluid-scaled fluctuations that are larger
than typical stochastic fluctuations. In this paper we show that chattering can
occur in the fluid limit of a controlled stochastic network when inappropriate
control parameters are used. The model has two large service pools operating
under the fixed-queue-ratio with activation and release thresholds (FQR-ART)
overload control which we proposed in a recent paper. We now show that, if the
control parameters are not chosen properly, then delays in activating and
releasing the control can cause chattering with large oscillations in the fluid
limit. In turn, these fluid-scaled fluctuations lead to severe congestion, even
when the arrival rates are smaller than the potential total service rate in the
system, a phenomenon referred to as congestion collapse. We show that the fluid
limit can be a bi-stable switching system possessing a unique nontrivial
periodic equilibrium, in addition to a unique stationary point
Heavy traffic analysis of open processing networks with complete resource pooling: asymptotic optimality of discrete review policies
We consider a class of open stochastic processing networks, with feedback
routing and overlapping server capabilities, in heavy traffic. The networks we
consider satisfy the so-called complete resource pooling condition and
therefore have one-dimensional approximating Brownian control problems.
We propose a simple discrete review policy for controlling such networks.
Assuming 2+\epsilon moments on the interarrival times and processing times,
we provide a conceptually simple proof of asymptotic optimality of the proposed
policy.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/105051604000000495 in the
Annals of Applied Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aap/) by the Institute
of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
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