Workload balancing and throughput optimization for heterogeneous systems subject to failures

Abstract

In this paper, we study the problem of optimizing the throughput of streaming applications for heterogeneous platforms subject to failures. The applications are linear graphs of tasks (pipelines), and a type is associated to each task. The challenge is to map tasks onto the machines of a target platform, but machines must be specialized to process only one task type, in order to avoid costly context or setup changes. The objective is to maximize the throughput, i.e., the rate at which jobs can be processed when accounting for failures. For identical machines, we prove that an optimal solution can be computed in polynomial time. However, the problem becomes NP-hard when two machines can compute the same task type at different speeds. Several polynomial time heuristics are designed, and simulation results demonstrate their efficiency. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.