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SEH: Size Estimate Hedging for Single-Server Queues

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Quantitative Evaluation of Systems (QEST 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 12846))

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Abstract

For a single server system, Shortest Remaining Processing Time (SRPT) is an optimal size-based policy. In this paper, we discuss scheduling a single-server system when exact information about the jobs’ processing times is not available. When the SRPT policy uses estimated processing times, the underestimation of large jobs can significantly degrade performance. We propose a simple heuristic, Size Estimate Hedging (SEH), that only uses estimated processing times for scheduling decisions. A job’s priority is increased dynamically according to an SRPT rule until it is determined that it is underestimated, at which time the priority is frozen. Numerical results suggest that SEH has desirable performance for estimation error variance that is consistent with what is seen in practice.

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Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank Ziv Scully for useful discussions on the limitations of the SEH policy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computing and Software, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

    Maryam Akbari-Moghaddam & Douglas G. Down

Authors
  1. Maryam Akbari-Moghaddam
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  2. Douglas G. Down
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Maryam Akbari-Moghaddam .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Alessandro Abate

  2. Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy

    Andrea Marin

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Akbari-Moghaddam, M., Down, D.G. (2021). SEH: Size Estimate Hedging for Single-Server Queues. In: Abate, A., Marin, A. (eds) Quantitative Evaluation of Systems. QEST 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12846. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85172-9_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85172-9_9

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-85171-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-85172-9

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