Optimal load balancing on distributed homogeneous unreliable processors
成果类型：
Article
署名作者：
Liu, Z; Righter, R
署名单位：
Universite Cote d'Azur; Inria; Santa Clara University
刊物名称：
OPERATIONS RESEARCH
ISSN/ISSBN：
0030-364X
DOI：
10.1287/opre.46.4.563
发表日期：
1998
页码：
563-573
关键词：
摘要：
We consider optimal load balancing in a distributed computing environment consisting of homogeneous unreliable processors. Each processor receives its own sequence of tasks from outside users, some of which can be redirected to the other processors. Processing times are independent and identically distributed with an arbitrary distribution. The arrival sequence of outside tasks to each processor may be arbitrary as long as it is independent of the state of the system. Processors may fail, with arbitrary failure and repair processes that are also independent of the state of the system. The only information available to a processor is the history of its decisions for routing work to other processors, and the arrival times of its own arrival sequence. We prove the optimality of the round-robin policy, in which each processor sends all the tasks that can be redirected to each of the other processors in turn. We show that, among all policies that balance workload, round robin stochastically minimizes the nth task completion time for all n, and minimizes response times and queue lengths in a separable increasing convex sense for the entire system. We also show that if there is a single centralized controller, round-robin is the optimal policy, and a single controller using round-robin routing is better than the optimal distributed system in which each processor routes its own arrivals. Again optimal and better are in the sense of stochastically minimizing task completion times, and minimizing response time and queue lengths in the separable increasing convex sense.