Spring 2019

Wed, Apr 17th 2019, 12:00PM, Venue: CIC 4101
Siva Theja Maguluri, Georgia Tech ISYE

Title: Optimal Resource Allocation in Data Centers: Drift Method and Transform Techniques

Abstract: Today's era of cloud computing is powered by massive data centers. Design and operation of these data centers involves solving several resource allocation problems. Exact characterization of queueing and/or delay performance in such systems is intractable and so, these systems are studied in various asymptotic regimes, heavy-traffic being one of the popular ones. Traditionally, heavy-traffic results are obtained using fluid limits, diffusion limits and reflected Brownian motion processes. More recently, much simpler `direct methods' have been developed. In this talk, I will illustrate the use of two related direct methods, viz., the Drift method and Transform techniques. This will be done in the context of two problems in data centers, viz., (i) load balancing of jobs on servers and (ii) scheduling in input queued switches and data center networks. The use of these techniques in non-heavy-traffic regimes will also be presented.

Bio: Siva Theja Maguluri is an Assistant Professor in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. Before that, he was a Research Staff Member in the Mathematical Sciences Department at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center. He obtained his Ph.D. and MS in ECE as well as MS in Applied Math from UIUC, and B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Madras. His research interests are broadly in Applied Probability, Optimization and Reinforcement Learning, and include Scheduling, Resource Allocation and Revenue Optimization in a variety of systems including Data Centers, Cloud Computing, Wireless Networks, Block Chains, Ride hailing systems etc. He is a co-recipient of the “Best Publication in Applied Probability” award, presented by INFORMS Applied probability society every two years.

link to video