Work-Efficient Load Balancing

Gokarna Sharma, Suresh Rai, Costas Busch, Jerry L. Trahan, Ramachandran Vaidyanathan

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Load balancing is the key to many parallel and distributed applications. We consider the following load balancing problem: given any undirected connected graph and an initial weight distribution on the nodes, determine a schedule to move weights across edges so as to have (almost) equal weights on the nodes. Weights are moved across edges in rounds, and, in a round, weights are moved between the adjacent nodes exactly once. We study this problem in both static and dynamic networks. Previously studied diffusion and dimension exchange algorithms are slow in practice in the sense that they require many rounds of weight exchanges. In this paper, we present a class of algorithms that are work-efficient, i.e., they reduce the number of rounds (i.e., iterations) of weight exchanges needed to balance the load. In our algorithms, a node exchanges load with its neighbors sequentially (one neighbor at a time) and the load at that node is updated before subsequent exchanges with other neighbors. Simulation results on six network topologies show that our algorithms balance the load quite work-efficiently compared to previous algorithms.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings - 43rd International Conference on Parallel Processing Workshops, ICPPW 2014
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages27-36
Number of pages10
ISBN (Electronic)9781479956159
DOIs
StatePublished - May 7 2015
Externally publishedYes
Event43rd International Conference on Parallel Processing Workshops, ICPPW 2014 - Minneapolis, United States
Duration: Sep 9 2014Sep 12 2014

Publication series

NameProceedings of the International Conference on Parallel Processing Workshops
Volume2015-May
ISSN (Print)1530-2016

Conference

Conference43rd International Conference on Parallel Processing Workshops, ICPPW 2014
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityMinneapolis
Period9/9/149/12/14

Keywords

  • Convergence
  • Diffusion algorithms
  • Dimension exchange algorithms
  • Dynamic networks
  • Load balancing
  • Work-efficiency

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • General Mathematics
  • Hardware and Architecture

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