7011829
QoS aware job scheduling in a cluster-based Web server for multimedia applications
We propose a cluster-based Web server where a few computing nodes are separately reserved for high-performance computing applications, such as multimedia, SSL, and CGI. As an example application, we consider a multimedia server that dynamically generates video units to satisfy the bit rate and bandwidth requirements of a variety of clients. To perform QoS aware scheduling of multiple multimedia jobs on the computing servers, a two-step algorithm is proposed. The first step is to fairly schedule multimedia streams to satisfy each stream's QoS requirement; and the second step is to balance the workload among heterogeneous computing nodes in the cluster. We propose a new quota-based adaptive coscheduling (QACS) algorithm that greatly reduces delay jitter by eliminating the out-of-order departure for outgoing streams, as well as achieves high throughput in a heterogeneous cluster. Experimental results show that the proposed scheduling technique gives adequate QoS guarantees to multiple streams.
12026284
mmGrid: distributed resource management infrastructure for multimedia applications
We are developing mmGrid (Multimedia Grid) as an extensible middleware architecture supporting multimedia applications in a grid computing environment. Our vision is to provide support for interactive applications from the following domains: graphics, visualization, streaming media and tele-immersion. The initial deployment will be within an enterprise as a mechanism for provisioning computing resources. However the scheduling system of mmGrid will be flexible, and will allow interactive and batch jobs to use the grid-computing paradigm. This paper presents our argument for using remote display technology in this environment. We also report on the use cases we support at this point, the system architecture for mmGrid and our research directions.
17954434
Fast proxy delivery of multiple streaming sessions in shared running buffers
With the falling price of memory, an increasing number of multimedia servers and proxies are now equipped with a large memory space. Caching media objects in the memory of a proxy helps to reduce the network traffic, the disk I/O bandwidth requirement, and the data delivery latency. The running buffer approach and its alternatives are representative techniques to caching streaming data in the memory. There are two limits in the existing techniques. First, although multiple running buffers for the same media object co-exist in a given processing period, data sharing among multiple buffers is not considered. Second, user access patterns are not insightfully considered in the buffer management. In this paper, we propose two techniques based on shared running buffers in the proxy to address these limits. Considering user access patterns and characteristics of the requested media objects, our techniques adaptively allocate memory buffers to fully utilize the currently buffered data of streaming sessions, with the aim to reduce both the server load and the network traffic. Experimentally comparing with several existing techniques, we show that the proposed techniques achieve significant performance improvement by effectively using the shared running buffers.
2815801
Architecture for resource allocation services supporting interactive remote desktop sessions in utility grids
Emerging large scale utility computing systems like Grids promise computing and storage to be provided to end users as a utility. System management services deployed in the middleware are a key to enabling this vision. Utility Grids provide a challenge in terms of scale, dynamism, and heterogeneity of resources and workloads. In this paper, we present a model based architecture for resource allocation services for Utility Grids. The proposed service is built in the context of interactive remote desktop session workloads and takes application performance QoS models into consideration. The key design guidelines are hierarchical request structure, application performance models, remote desktop session performance models, site admission control, multi-variable resource assignment system, and runtime session admission control. We have also built a simulation toolkit that can handle mixed batch and remote desktop session requests, and have implemented our proposed resource allocation service into the toolkit. We present some results from experiments done using the toolkit. Our proposed architecture for resource allocation services addresses the needs of emerging utility computing systems and captures the key concepts and guidelines for building such services in these environments.
17912290
An environment for enabling interactive grids
Traditional use of grid computing allows a user to submit batch jobs in a grid environment. We believe, next generation grids will extend the application domain to include interactive graphical sessions. We term such grids interactive grids. In this paper, we describe some of the challenges involved in building interactive grids. These include fine grain access control, QoS guarantees, and dynamic account management. In order to architect interactive grids, we propose and describe I-GENV, an environment for enabling interactive grids. I-GENV consists of GISH-'Grid Interactive Shell', Controlled Desktop, SAC-'Session Admission Control' module, GMMA-'Grid Monitoring and Management Agents', System Policies, and Dynamic Account Manager. We also present our testbed implementation of I-GENV using and extending Globus Toolkit 2.0 for the Grid middleware infrastructure, and VNC as the remote display technology.
13887054
A resource management framework for interactive Grids
Traditional use of Grid computing systems has been for batch jobs in the scientific and academic computing. We envision the next generation Grid computing systems to support graphical interactive sessions. In this paper, we propose a resource management framework for supporting graphical interactive sessions in a Grid computing system. We describe the high-level architectural resource management framework distributed among the submission node, central scheduler node, and the execution node. We then describe in detail the resource management framework on the execution node. The description of the resource management framework on the scheduler node is kept at a high level in this paper. The framework on execution nodes consists of Resource Management Agents, an Admission Control system and Application Predictor system. The agents on the execution node are Startup Agents, Sensor Agents, Monitoring Agents, Aggregator Agents, Enforcement Agents and Registration Agents. The Session Admission Control system is responsible for determining if a new application session can be admitted to the execution node. An Application Predictor system is responsible for predicting the resource utilization behavior of applications based on data obtained from the Resource Management Agents. The proposed framework allows for implementation of a scalable and extensible middleware for interactive Grid resource management. It supports fine-grained performance guarantees specified in service level agreements and brings forth some important and novel contributions to enable graphical interactive sessions on Grids. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
761465
New results on quantifier elimination over real closed fields and applications to constraint databases
In this paper, we give a new algorithm for quantifier elimination in the first order theory of real closed fields that improves the complexity of the best known algorithm for this problem till now. Unlike previously known algorithms [Basu et al. 1996; Renegar 1992; Heintz et al. 1990], the combinatorial part of the complexity (the part depending on the number of polynomials in the input) of this new algorithm is independent of the number of free variables. Moreover, under the assumption that each polynomial in the input depends only on a constant number of the free variables, the algebraic part of the complexity(the part depending on the degrees of the input polynomials) can also be made independent of the number of free variables. This new feature of our algorithm allow us to obtain a new algorithm for a variant of the quantifier elimination problem. We give an almost optimal algorithm for this new problem, which we call the uniform quantifier elimination problem.
Using tthe uniform quantifier elimination algorithm, we give an algorithm for solving a problem arising in the field of constraint databases with real polynomial constraints. We give an algorithm for converting a query with natural domain semantics to an equivalent one with active domain semantics. A nonconstructive version of this result was proved in Benedikt et al. [1998]. Very recently, a constructive proof was also given independently in Benedikt and Libkin [1997]. However, complexity issues were not considered and no algorithm with a reasonable complexity bound was known for this latter problem till now.
We also point out interesting logical consequences of this algorithmic result, concerning the expressive power of a constraint query language over the reals. This leads to simpler and constructive proofs for these inexpressibility results than the ones known before.
Moreover, our improved algorithm for performing quantifier elimination immediately leads to improved algorithms for several problems for which quantifier elimination is a basic step, for example, the problem of computing the closure of a given semi-algebraic set.
8618090
Computing the first Betti number and the connected components of semi-algebraic sets
In this paper we describe the first singly exponential algorithm for computing the first Betti number of a given semi-algebraic set. We also describe algorithms for obtaining semi-algebraic descriptions of the semi-algebraically connected components of any given real algebraic or semi-algebraic set. Singly exponential algorithms for computing the zero-th Betti number, and the Euler-Poincaré characteristic, were known before. No singly exponential algorithm was known for computing any of the individual Betti numbers other than the zero-th one.
47390024
On the combinatorial and algebraic complexity of quantifier elimination
In this paper we give a new algorithm for performing quantifier elimination from first order formulae over real closed fields. This algorithm improves the complexity of the asymptotically fastest algorithm for this problem, known to this date. A new feature of our algorithm is that the role of the algebraic part (the dependence on the degrees of the input polynomials) and the combinatorial part (the dependence on the number of polynomials) are separated, making possible our improved complexity bound. Another new feature is that the degrees of the polynomials in the equivalent quantifier-free formula that we output, are independent of the number of input polynomials. As special cases of this algorithm, we obtain new and improved algorithms for deciding a sentence in the first order theory over real closed fields, and also for solving the existential problem in the first order theory over real closed fields. Using the theory developed in this paper, we also give an improved bound on the radius of a ball centered at the origin, which is guaranteed to intersect every connected component of the sign partition induced by a family of polynomials. We also use our methods to obtain algorithms for solving certain decision problems in real and complex geometry which improves the complexity of the currently known algorithms for these problems.<<ETX>>
37245904
Model checking the Java meta-locking algorithm
We apply the XMC model checker to the Java meta-locking algorithm, a highly optimized technique for ensuring mutually exclusive access by threads to object monitor queues. Our abstract specification of the meta-locking algorithm is fully parameterized, both on M, the number of threads, and N, the number of objects. Using XMC, we show that for a variety of values of M and N, the algorithm indeed provides mutual exclusion and freedom from lockout.
12323199
On Context-Specific Substitutability of Web Services
Web service substitution refers to the problem of identifying a service that can replace another service in the context of a composition with a specified functionality. Existing solutions to this problem rely on detecting the functional and behavioral equivalence of a particular service to be replaced and candidate services that could replace it. We introduce the notion of context-specific substitutability, where context refers to the overall functionality of the composition that is required to be maintained after replacement of its constituents. Using the context information, we investigate two variants of the substitution problem, namely environment-independent and environment- dependent, where environment refers to the constituents of a composition and show how the substitutability criteria can be relaxed within this model. We provide a logical formulation of the resulting criteria based on model checking techniques as well as prove the soundness and completeness of the proposed approach.