NDLI: How asymmetry helps load balancing

Content Provider	IEEE Xplore Digital Library
Author	Vocking, B.
Copyright Year	1999
Description	Author affiliation: Int. Comput. Sci. Inst., Berkeley, CA, USA (Vocking, B.)
Abstract	This paper deals with balls and bins processes related to randomized load balancing, dynamic resource allocation and hashing. Suppose n balls have to be assigned to n bins, where each ball has to be placed without knowledge about the distribution of previously placed balls. The goal is to achieve an allocation that is as even as possible so that no bin gets much more balls than the average. A well known and good solution for this problem is to choose d possible locations for each ball at random, to look into each of these bins, and to place the ball into the least full among these bins. This class of algorithms has been investigated intensively in the past but almost all previous analyses assume that the d locations for each ball are chosen uniform and independently at random from the set of all bins. We investigate whether a non-uniform and possibly dependent choice of the d locations for a ball can improve the load balancing. Three types of selections are distinguished: 1) uniform and independent 2) non-uniform and independent 3) non-uniform and dependent. Our first result shows that choosing the locations in a non-uniform way (type 2) results in a better load balancing than choosing the locations uniformly (type 1). Surprising, this smooth load balancing is obtained by an algorithm called "Always-Go-Left" which creates an asymmetric assignment of the balls to the bins. Our second result is a lower bound on the smallest-possible maximum load that can be achieved by any allocation algorithm of type 1, 2, or 3.
Starting Page	131
Ending Page	141
File Size	174772
Page Count	11
File Format	PDF
ISBN	0769504094
ISSN	02725428
DOI	10.1109/SFFCS.1999.814585
Language	English
Publisher	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Publisher Date	1999-10-17
Publisher Place	USA
Access Restriction	Subscribed
Rights Holder	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subject Keyword	Load management Resource management Computer science Algorithm design and analysis Nominations and elections Upper bound Parallel algorithms
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article

Sl.	Authority	Responsibilities	Communication Details
1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
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