Title
The impact of quanta on the performance of multi-level time sharing policy under heavy-tailed workloads
Abstract
Recent research indicates that modern computer workloads (e.g. processing time of web requests) follow heavy-tailed distributions. In a heavy-tailed distribution there are a large number of small tasks and a small number of large tasks. The rationale for using a multi-level time sharing policy is that it can minimise both waiting time and slowdown of tasks that require relatively small service requirements. This in turn will improve the overall performance of the system. Using a 2-level system (policy), we investigate the effect of quanta on the overall performance of a multi-level time sharing policy under a range of workloads and task size variabilities. We measure the performance using slowdown and flow time. First, we show that for most workloads and task size variabilities there exists a unique set of quanta ('optimal' set of quanta) that would result in the best performance. Second, we investigate the performance degradation in one metric under the optimal parameters of other metric. Through an extensive numerical analysis, we find that under high system loads and task size variabilities using the optimal set of quanta corresponding to overall expected slowdown can result in the overall expected flow time to deteriorate significantly. Finally we show that a 3-level system with the optimal set of quanta outperforms a 2-level system with the optimal set of quanta for all the scenarios considered.
Year
Venue
Keywords
2009
ACSC
task size,2-level system,processing time,heavy-tailed workloads,3-level system,flow time,multi-level time sharing policy,overall performance,best performance,overall expected flow time,heavy-tailed distribution,numerical analysis,heavy tailed distribution,time sharing,heavy tail
Field
DocType
Citations 
Small number,Computer science,Slowdown,Flow time,Real-time computing,Numerical analysis,Time-sharing
Conference
3
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.43
13
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Malith Jayasinghe1173.43
Zahir Tari22409368.61
Panlop Zeephongsekul314419.11