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Robust scheduling for flexible processing networks

Part of: Special processes Operations research and management science Stochastic processes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 June 2017

Ramtin Pedarsani ,
Jean Walrand  and
Yuan Zhong
Ramtin Pedarsani*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Jean Walrand*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Yuan Zhong*
Affiliation:
Columbia University
*
*Current address: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara CA 93106, USA. Email address: ramtin@ece.ucsb.edu
** Current address: Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California Berkeley, 257 Cory Hall, Berkeley CA 94720, USA. Email address: walrand@berkeley.edu
*** Postal address: University of Chicago Booth School of Business, 360 Harper Center, 5807 South Woodlawn Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637, USA. Email address: yuan.zhong@chicagobooth.edu
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Abstract

Modern processing networks often consist of heterogeneous servers with widely varying capabilities, and process job flows with complex structure and requirements. A major challenge in designing efficient scheduling policies in these networks is the lack of reliable estimates of system parameters, and an attractive approach for addressing this challenge is to design robust policies, i.e. policies that do not use system parameters such as arrival and/or service rates for making scheduling decisions. In this paper we propose a general framework for the design of robust policies. The main technical novelty is the use of a stochastic gradient projection method that reacts to queue-length changes in order to find a balanced allocation of service resources to incoming tasks. We illustrate our approach on two broad classes of processing systems, namely the flexible fork-join networks and the flexible queueing networks, and prove the rate stability of our proposed policies for these networks under nonrestrictive assumptions.

Keywords

Robust schedulingflexible queueing networkstochastic gradient projection

MSC classification

Primary: 60K25: Queueing theory
Secondary: 90B15: Network models, stochastic 60G17: Sample path properties
Type
Research Article
Information
Advances in Applied Probability , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , June 2017 , pp. 603 - 628
Copyright
Copyright © Applied Probability Trust 2017 

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