Coordination mechanisms for selfish scheduling

In machine scheduling, a set of jobs must be scheduled on a set of machines so as to minimize some global objective function, such as the makespan, which we consider in this paper. In practice, jobs are often controlled by independent, selfishly acting agents, which each select a machine for process...

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Main Authors: Mirrokni, Vahab, Li, Li (Erran), Immorlica, Nicole, Schulz, Andreas S.
Other Authors: Sloan School of Management
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Elsevier 2010
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/52521
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9595-459X
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author Mirrokni, Vahab
Li, Li (Erran)
Immorlica, Nicole
Schulz, Andreas S.
author2 Sloan School of Management
author_facet Sloan School of Management
Mirrokni, Vahab
Li, Li (Erran)
Immorlica, Nicole
Schulz, Andreas S.
author_sort Mirrokni, Vahab
collection MIT
description In machine scheduling, a set of jobs must be scheduled on a set of machines so as to minimize some global objective function, such as the makespan, which we consider in this paper. In practice, jobs are often controlled by independent, selfishly acting agents, which each select a machine for processing that minimizes the (expected) completion time. This scenario can be formalized as a game in which the players are job owners, the strategies are machines, and a player’s disutility is the completion time of its jobs in the corresponding schedule. The equilibria of these games may result in larger-than-optimal overall makespan. The price of anarchy is the ratio of the worst-case equilibrium makespan to the optimal makespan. In this paper, we design and analyze scheduling policies, or coordination mechanisms, for machines which aim to minimize the price of anarchy of the corresponding game. We study coordination mechanisms for four classes of multiprocessor machine scheduling problems and derive upper and lower bounds on the price of anarchy of these mechanisms. For several of the proposed mechanisms, we also prove that the system converges to a pure-strategy Nash equilibrium in a linear number of rounds. Finally, we note that our results are applicable to several practical problems arising in communication networks.
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spelling mit-1721.1/525212022-09-28T11:40:34Z Coordination mechanisms for selfish scheduling Mirrokni, Vahab Li, Li (Erran) Immorlica, Nicole Schulz, Andreas S. Sloan School of Management Schulz, Andreas S. Schulz, Andreas S. In machine scheduling, a set of jobs must be scheduled on a set of machines so as to minimize some global objective function, such as the makespan, which we consider in this paper. In practice, jobs are often controlled by independent, selfishly acting agents, which each select a machine for processing that minimizes the (expected) completion time. This scenario can be formalized as a game in which the players are job owners, the strategies are machines, and a player’s disutility is the completion time of its jobs in the corresponding schedule. The equilibria of these games may result in larger-than-optimal overall makespan. The price of anarchy is the ratio of the worst-case equilibrium makespan to the optimal makespan. In this paper, we design and analyze scheduling policies, or coordination mechanisms, for machines which aim to minimize the price of anarchy of the corresponding game. We study coordination mechanisms for four classes of multiprocessor machine scheduling problems and derive upper and lower bounds on the price of anarchy of these mechanisms. For several of the proposed mechanisms, we also prove that the system converges to a pure-strategy Nash equilibrium in a linear number of rounds. Finally, we note that our results are applicable to several practical problems arising in communication networks. 2010-03-11T19:49:19Z 2010-03-11T19:49:19Z 2008-12 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/SubmittedJournalArticle 0304-3975 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/52521 Immorlica, Nicole et al. “Coordination mechanisms for selfish scheduling.” Theoretical Computer Science 410.17 (2009): 1589-1598. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9595-459X en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tcs.2008.12.032 Theoretical Computer Science Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. application/pdf Elsevier Andreas Schulz
spellingShingle Mirrokni, Vahab
Li, Li (Erran)
Immorlica, Nicole
Schulz, Andreas S.
Coordination mechanisms for selfish scheduling
title Coordination mechanisms for selfish scheduling
title_full Coordination mechanisms for selfish scheduling
title_fullStr Coordination mechanisms for selfish scheduling
title_full_unstemmed Coordination mechanisms for selfish scheduling
title_short Coordination mechanisms for selfish scheduling
title_sort coordination mechanisms for selfish scheduling
url http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/52521
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9595-459X
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