Online Two-Dimensional Load Balancing

In this paper, we consider the problem of assigning 2-dimensional vector jobs to identical machines online so to minimize the maximum load on any dimension of any machine. For arbitrary number of dimensions d, this problem is known as vector scheduling, and recent research has established the optimal competitive ratio as O((log d)/(log log d)) (Im et al. FOCS 2015, Azar et al. SODA 2018). But, these results do not shed light on the situation for small number of dimensions, particularly for d = 2 which is of practical interest. In this case, a trivial analysis shows that the classic list scheduling greedy algorithm has a competitive ratio of 3. We show the following improvements over this baseline in this paper: - We give an improved, and tight, analysis of the list scheduling algorithm establishing a competitive ratio of 8/3 for two dimensions. - If the value of opt is known, we improve the competitive ratio to 9/4 using a variant of the classic best fit algorithm for two dimensions. - For any fixed number of dimensions, we design an algorithm that is provably the best possible against a fractional optimum solution. This algorithm provides a proof of concept that we can simulate the optimal algorithm online up to the integrality gap of the natural LP relaxation of the problem

Steady State Analysis of Load Balancing Algorithms in the Heavy Traffic Regime

abstract: This dissertation studies load balancing algorithms for many-server systems (with N servers) and focuses on the steady-state performance of load balancing algorithms in the heavy traffic regime. The framework of Stein’s method and (iterative) state-space collapse (SSC) are used to analyze three load balancing systems: 1) load balancing in the Sub-Halfin-Whitt regime with exponential service time; 2) load balancing in the Beyond-Halfin-Whitt regime with exponential service time; 3) load balancing in the Sub-Halfin-Whitt regime with Coxian-2 service time. When in the Sub-Halfin-Whitt regime, the sufficient conditions are established such that any load balancing algorithm that satisfies the conditions have both asymptotic zero waiting time and zero waiting probability. Furthermore, the number of servers with more than one jobs is o(1), in other words, the system collapses to a one-dimensional space. The result is proven using Stein’s method and state space collapse (SSC), which are powerful mathematical tools for steady-state analysis of load balancing algorithms. The second system is in even “heavier” traffic regime, and an iterative refined procedure is proposed to obtain the steady-state metrics. Again, asymptotic zero delay and waiting are established for a set of load balancing algorithms. Different from the first system, the system collapses to a two-dimensional state-space instead of one-dimensional state-space. The third system is more challenging because of “non-monotonicity” with Coxian-2 service time, and an iterative state space collapse is proposed to tackle the “non-monotonicity” challenge. For these three systems, a set of load balancing algorithms is established, respectively, under which the probability that an incoming job is routed to an idle server is one asymptotically at steady-state. The set of load balancing algorithms includes join-the-shortest-queue (JSQ), idle-one-first(I1F), join-the-idle-queue (JIQ), and power-of-d-choices (Pod) with a carefully-chosen d.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Electrical Engineering 201

A Parallel Mesh-Adaptive Framework for Hyperbolic Conservation Laws

We report on the development of a computational framework for the parallel, mesh-adaptive solution of systems of hyperbolic conservation laws like the time-dependent Euler equations in compressible gas dynamics or Magneto-Hydrodynamics (MHD) and similar models in plasma physics. Local mesh refinement is realized by the recursive bisection of grid blocks along each spatial dimension, implemented numerical schemes include standard finite-differences as well as shock-capturing central schemes, both in connection with Runge-Kutta type integrators. Parallel execution is achieved through a configurable hybrid of POSIX-multi-threading and MPI-distribution with dynamic load balancing. One- two- and three-dimensional test computations for the Euler equations have been carried out and show good parallel scaling behavior. The Racoon framework is currently used to study the formation of singularities in plasmas and fluids.Comment: late submissio

Two dimensional array based overlay network for balancing load of peer-to-peer live video streaming

The live video data is streaming usually in a tree-based overlay network or in a mesh-based overlay network. In case of departure of a peer with additional upload bandwidth, the overlay network becomes very vulnerable to churn. In this paper, a two dimensional array-based overlay network is proposed for streaming the live video stream data. As there is always a peer or a live video streaming server to upload the live video stream data, so the overlay network is very stable and very robust to churn. Peers are placed according to their upload and download bandwidth, which enhances the balance of load and performance. The overlay network utilizes the additional upload bandwidth of peers to minimize chunk delivery delay and to maximize balance of load. The procedure, which is used for distributing the additional upload bandwidth of the peers, distributes the additional upload bandwidth to the heterogeneous strength peers in a fair treat distribution approach and to the homogeneous strength peers in a uniform distribution approach. The proposed overlay network has been simulated by Qualnet from Scalable Network Technologies and results are presented in this paper

Quasirandom Load Balancing

We propose a simple distributed algorithm for balancing indivisible tokens on graphs. The algorithm is completely deterministic, though it tries to imitate (and enhance) a random algorithm by keeping the accumulated rounding errors as small as possible. Our new algorithm surprisingly closely approximates the idealized process (where the tokens are divisible) on important network topologies. On d-dimensional torus graphs with n nodes it deviates from the idealized process only by an additive constant. In contrast to that, the randomized rounding approach of Friedrich and Sauerwald (2009) can deviate up to Omega(polylog(n)) and the deterministic algorithm of Rabani, Sinclair and Wanka (1998) has a deviation of Omega(n^{1/d}). This makes our quasirandom algorithm the first known algorithm for this setting which is optimal both in time and achieved smoothness. We further show that also on the hypercube our algorithm has a smaller deviation from the idealized process than the previous algorithms.Comment: 25 page

Dynamic load balancing in parallel KD-tree k-means

One among the most influential and popular data mining methods is the k-Means algorithm for cluster analysis. Techniques for improving the efficiency of k-Means have been largely explored in two main directions. The amount of computation can be significantly reduced by adopting geometrical constraints and an efficient data structure, notably a multidimensional binary search tree (KD-Tree). These techniques allow to reduce the number of distance computations the algorithm performs at each iteration. A second direction is parallel processing, where data and computation loads are distributed over many processing nodes. However, little work has been done to provide a parallel formulation of the efficient sequential techniques based on KD-Trees. Such approaches are expected to have an irregular distribution of computation load and can suffer from load imbalance. This issue has so far limited the adoption of these efficient k-Means variants in parallel computing environments. In this work, we provide a parallel formulation of the KD-Tree based k-Means algorithm for distributed memory systems and address its load balancing issue. Three solutions have been developed and tested. Two approaches are based on a static partitioning of the data set and a third solution incorporates a dynamic load balancing policy

MLB: multilevel load balancing for structured grid applications

The Multilevel Load Balancing algorithm (MLB) is a parallel algorithm that determines the communication schedule that is necessary to balance a distributed discrete load function. The MLB algorithm focuses on structured grid computations and their load balancing requirements, which we feel are largely unsupported within the load balancing community. The interface to MLB is inherently simple; a distributed discrete load function is provided by the user and a communication schedule is returned. The load function can, for example, map to one or more distributed arrays. So far the implementation includes a parallel version of only the one dimensional MLB algorithm and produces a communication schedule that requires at most log(p) communication steps, where p is the number of processors (log() stands for the logarithm of base two). This work forms just one of the object-oriented class libraries within the OVERTURE Framework, an object-oriented environment for the numerical solution of partial differential equations in serial and parallel environments