research-article

The Online Pause and Resume Problem: Optimal Algorithms and An Application to Carbon-Aware Load Shifting

Authors:

Adam Lechowicz,

Nicolas Christianson,

Mohammad Hajiesmaili,

Adam Wierman, and

Prashant ShenoyAuthors Info & Claims

Proceedings of the ACM on Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems, Volume 7, Issue 3

Article No.: 45, Pages 1 - 32

https://doi.org/10.1145/3626776

Published: 12 December 2023 Publication History

Abstract

We introduce and study the online pause and resume problem. In this problem, a player attempts to find the k lowest (alternatively, highest) prices in a sequence of fixed length T, which is revealed sequentially. At each time step, the player is presented with a price and decides whether to accept or reject it. The player incurs aswitching cost whenever their decision changes in consecutive time steps, i.e., whenever they pause or resume purchasing. This online problem is motivated by the goal of carbon-aware load shifting, where a workload may be paused during periods of high carbon intensity and resumed during periods of low carbon intensity and incurs a cost when saving or restoring its state. It has strong connections to existing problems studied in the literature on online optimization, though it introduces unique technical challenges that prevent the direct application of existing algorithms. Extending prior work on threshold-based algorithms, we introducedouble-threshold algorithms for both the minimization and maximization variants of this problem. We further show that the competitive ratios achieved by these algorithms are the best achievable by any deterministic online algorithm. Finally, we empirically validate our proposed algorithm through case studies on the application of carbon-aware load shifting using real carbon trace data and existing baseline algorithms.

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Cited By

Lechowicz AChristianson NZuo JBashir NHajiesmaili MWierman AShenoy P(2024)The Online Pause and Resume Problem: Optimal Algorithms and An Application to Carbon-Aware Load ShiftingACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review10.1145/3673660.365508652:1(47-48)Online publication date: 13-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3673660.3655086
Lechowicz AChristianson NZuo JBashir NHajiesmaili MWierman AShenoy PGaretto MMarin ACiucu FFanti GRighter R(2024)The Online Pause and Resume Problem: Optimal Algorithms and An Application to Carbon-Aware Load ShiftingAbstracts of the 2024 ACM SIGMETRICS/IFIP PERFORMANCE Joint International Conference on Measurement and Modeling of Computer Systems10.1145/3652963.3655086(47-48)Online publication date: 10-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3652963.3655086
Bostandoost RLechowicz AHanafy WBashir NShenoy PHajiesmaili M(2024)LACS: Learning-Augmented Algorithms for Carbon-Aware Resource Scaling with Uncertain DemandProceedings of the 15th ACM International Conference on Future and Sustainable Energy Systems10.1145/3632775.3661942(27-45)Online publication date: 4-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3632775.3661942

Index Terms

The Online Pause and Resume Problem: Optimal Algorithms and An Application to Carbon-Aware Load Shifting
1. Theory of computation
  1. Design and analysis of algorithms
    1. Online algorithms
  2. Theory and algorithms for application domains

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cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems

Proceedings of the ACM on Measurement and Analysis of Computing Systems Volume 7, Issue 3

POMACS

December 2023

599 pages

EISSN:2476-1249

DOI:10.1145/3637453

Editors:
Augustin Chaintreau
Columbia University
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Leana Golubchik
University of Southern California, United States
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Zhi-Li Zhang
University of Minnesota, United States

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Copyright © 2023 ACM.

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Published: 12 December 2023

Published in POMACS Volume 7, Issue 3

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Cited By

Lechowicz AChristianson NZuo JBashir NHajiesmaili MWierman AShenoy P(2024)The Online Pause and Resume Problem: Optimal Algorithms and An Application to Carbon-Aware Load ShiftingACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review10.1145/3673660.365508652:1(47-48)Online publication date: 13-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3673660.3655086
Lechowicz AChristianson NZuo JBashir NHajiesmaili MWierman AShenoy PGaretto MMarin ACiucu FFanti GRighter R(2024)The Online Pause and Resume Problem: Optimal Algorithms and An Application to Carbon-Aware Load ShiftingAbstracts of the 2024 ACM SIGMETRICS/IFIP PERFORMANCE Joint International Conference on Measurement and Modeling of Computer Systems10.1145/3652963.3655086(47-48)Online publication date: 10-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3652963.3655086
Bostandoost RLechowicz AHanafy WBashir NShenoy PHajiesmaili M(2024)LACS: Learning-Augmented Algorithms for Carbon-Aware Resource Scaling with Uncertain DemandProceedings of the 15th ACM International Conference on Future and Sustainable Energy Systems10.1145/3632775.3661942(27-45)Online publication date: 4-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3632775.3661942

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