NeurIPS 2020

Learning Augmented Energy Minimization via Speed Scaling


Review 1

Summary and Contributions: This submission considers the uniform speed scaling problem, which is an optimization problem to minimize the energy consumption by adjusting speed of processing unit under the constraint that all given jobs are processed before their deadlines. Algorithms for this optimization problems have been investigated in the previous studies both in the offline and the online setting, where the offline setting means that all the inputs of the problem are given to the algorithm and the online setting means that the workload of each job is not given to the algorithm in advance and it is revealed when the process of the job starts. For the online setting, algorithms with provable competitive ratios are known. The submission considers a new setting of the uniform speed scaling problem. It is almost same as the online setting, but the prediction on the workloads of jobs are also given. This prediction may not be correct, and the correct workloads are given as in the usual online setting. The submission presents a bound on the competitive ratio of an algorithm, which depends on the prediction error of the workload.

Strengths: - A new interesting setting of the online uniform speed scaling problem. The usual online setting (no information on the workload is available before the process of the job starts) is too restrictive, and the proposed setting is more realistic and useful. - The paper presents a theoretically provable performance guarantee of the proposed algorithm.

Weaknesses: - This is a purely algorithm paper. The result is on a kind of sensitive analysis of the algorithm. Although this result may be useful when it is combined with machine learning, it is more suitable to be presented in an algorithm conference. - The definition of the prediction error is artificial by a technical reason. I know no machine algorithm which gives a bound on this kind of prediction error.

Correctness: The analysis seems correct although I do not check all the details. The experimental setting is not clear. In particular, it does not explain how the predictions are used in the baseline online algorithms. Thus I am not sure the experiments are fair.

Clarity: The paper is written well.

Relation to Prior Work: Relation to the prior work is discussed appropriately.

Reproducibility: No

Additional Feedback: I read the authors' feedback and my opinion hasn't changed.


Review 2

Summary and Contributions: In the energy minimization via speed scaling problem, one is given a single machine (server) that can process jobs at variable speeds. The energy consumed by the machine at any time t is given by s(t)^alpha for some alpha>1 where s(t) refers to the speed of the machine at time t. The goal is to design an algorithm that processes all jobs within their deadlines and minimizes the total energy spend. This is a well studied problem and tight offline and online algorithms are known in this setting. The authors propose a learning-augmented online algorithm for this problem where the algorithm is provided with certain predictions regarding the workloads arriving at each time step. The goal is to design an algorithm that is (almost) optimal if the predictions are (almost) correct and still guarantee good worst case performance. The paper makes a number of interesting contributions. First, even in the standard setup without predictions, they show that the classical AVR algorithm (Yao) yields a 2^alpha approximation in the special case of uniform deadlines. The main result follows in two steps - first, the authors propose a new algorithm LAS-Trust that utilizes predictions and is consistent but not robust, i.e. it performs well when predictions are good. Second, the authors show a general technique to make any algorithm robust (even with general deadlines).

Strengths: The paper provides a novel learning augmented algorithm for a fundamental scheduling problem. The paper makes non-trivial technical contributions and is likely to spark further research in this area. At first glance, the error model introduced by the authors seems very brittle, but the authors take care to strengthen it in the appendix by allowing the predictions to be ‘shifted’.

Weaknesses: No obvious weaknesses. The paper considers an interesting problem and makes non-trivial contributions.

Correctness: Yes

Clarity: Yes

Relation to Prior Work: Yes

Reproducibility: Yes

Additional Feedback: Other comments: Line 44. typo; “well-funded” -> “well-founded”?


Review 3

Summary and Contributions: This paper studies an online scheduling problem with power constraint that's a polynomial of the workload. It gives an online algorithm with provable guarantees (as well as a lower bound in this model), and also analyzes the consistentness and robustness of the proposed routine.

Strengths: Online scheduling is quite intricate, and significant work was needed to get to an algorithm with provable guarantees.The paper also experimentally evaluates their algorithm on both synthetic and real data sets.

Weaknesses: The paper reads more like an online algorithms paper rather than a learning paper. While there was a brief discussion of the ability to incorporate arbitrary `downstream' schedulers, this connection was not expanded upon, and not very clear to me. On the experimental side, the workload (logins to a website) seems to be more close to a database application. The role of the \alpha parameter in performance is also not explicitly justified: if possible I'd liked to have seen it being verified experimentally.

Correctness: I believe the correctness of the guarantees, and find the experimental method for evaluating the scheduling algorithm reasonable. On the other hand, the dependence between workload and power consumption might differ for different applications: I'd prefer to see some experimental justifications of this model.

Clarity: While the motivation and context of the problem were clearly stated, it took some effort to figure out the formal definition of the problem as well as result. There are also a number of typos, e.g. on line 44, `funded' -> 'founded'.

Relation to Prior Work: Yes, the paper clearly discusses its improvements over previous algorithms.

Reproducibility: Yes

Additional Feedback: This result is a solid result in scheduling / online algorithms. While it may have connections with optimizing the performances of ML systems/algorithms, I'd like to see more explicit discussions of such connections in the paper. Per the feedback provided by the authors, I'm more convinced about the relevance of this result, and more generally, of the approach taken.


Review 4

Summary and Contributions: This paper studies the classical scheduling question of speed scaling with a new perspective -- one of learning-augmented online algorithms. In particular, instead of a purely worst-case view, the paper assumes the online algorithm has access to a noisy prediction of the instance and then shows how to use this model to develop an efficient black-box algorithm. Interestingly, the paper also provides a lower bound that shows that it is impossible to both be optimal when predictions are correct and "robust" to error at the same time.

Strengths: This paper brings the growing literature on learning-augmented online algorithms to a new setting -- speed scaling. Speed scaling is a classical problem where worst-case results tend to be particularly pessimistic and so it is ripe for improvement with this sort of beyond worst-case analysis. The proposed prediction model is interesting and novel. It is likely to be used in follow-up work in the context of other online algorithms.

Weaknesses: The design of the algorithms, while interesting theoretically, seems not particularly practical. In particular, the fact that LAS uses predictions of the full instance does not make sense in practice since predictions of the far future are likely to be very noisy and, in most situations, a much more limited prediction window is used in practice. The paper focuses on the simplest form of speed scaling, leaving more complex extensions to the appendix and not evaluating them numerically. The paper would be strengthened if the focus was on more general settings of the problem.

Correctness: I reviewed the provided proofs and did not find any issues.

Clarity: The paper is well written and clearly organized.

Relation to Prior Work: The paper provides a brief description of related work on speed scaling but misses some work that may be interesting to include. In particular, there is a literature on speed scaling in stochastic settings that is relevant, since the models can be viewed as providing stochastic predictions about the workload. In that context, the issue of robustness has also been considered, e.g., Optimality, fairness, and robustness in speed scaling designs by Andrew et al. and the references therein. Additionally, there is considerable work on predictions in related online problems that may provide additional context for the prediction model here. An example is the context of online optimization, where a variety of prediction models have been considered, e.g., see Online Optimization in Cloud Resource Provisioning: Predictions, Regrets, and Algorithms by Comden et al and the references therein

Reproducibility: Yes

Additional Feedback: Thank you for the author response. I have given the section in the appendix a careful read and it is interesting how you do the extension to allow the creation of independent segments. If the paper is accepted, I encourage you to include some discussion of these extensions in the body along with the discussion of additional related work.