Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

On-Line Algorithms, Real Time, the Virtue of Laziness, and the Power of Clairvoyance

  • Conference paper
Book cover Theory and Applications of Models of Computation (TAMC 2006)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 3959))

Abstract

In several practical circumstances we have to solve a problem whose instance is not a priori completely known. Situations of this kind occur in computer systems and networks management, in financial decision making, in robotics etc. Problems that have to be solved without a complete knowledge of the instance are called on − line problems. The analysis of properties of on-line problems and the design of algorithmic techniques for their solution (on − line algorithms) have been the subject of intense study since the 70-ies, when classical algorithms for scheduling tasks in an on-line fashion [22] and for handling paging in virtual storage systems [11] have been first devised. In the 80-ies formal concepts for analyzing and measuring the quality of on-line algorithms have been introduced [40] and the notion of competitive analysis has been defined as the ratio between the value of the solution that is obtained by an on-line algorithm and the value of the best solution that can be achieved by an optimum off-line algorithm that has full knowledge of the problem instance. Since then a very broad variety of on-line problems have been addressed in the literature [14, 19]: memory allocation and paging, bin packing, load balancing in multiprocessor systems, updating and searching a data structure (e.g. a list), scheduling, financial investment, etc.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Afrati, F., Cosmadakis, S., Papadimitriou, C.H., Papageorgiou, G., Papakostantinou, N.: The complexity of the travelling repairman problem. Informatique Theorique et Applications 20(1), 79–87 (1986)

    MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  2. Albers, S.: On the influence of lookahead in competitive paging algorithms. Algorithmica 18(3), 283–305 (1997)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  3. Albers, S.: A competitive analysis of the list update problem with lookahead. Theor. Comput. Sci. 197(1-2), 95–109 (1998)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  4. Allulli, L., Ausiello, G., Laura, L.: On the power of lookahead in on-line vehicle routing problems. Technical Report TR-02-05, Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica, Universitá di Roma La Sapienza (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Allulli, L., Ausiello, G., Laura, L.: On the power of lookahead in on-line vehicle routing problems [extended abstract]. In: Wang, L. (ed.) COCOON 2005. LNCS, vol. 3595, pp. 728–736. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Ausiello, G., Bonifaci, V., Laura, L.: The on-line asymmetric traveling salesman problem. In: Dehne, F., López-Ortiz, A., Sack, J.-R. (eds.) WADS 2005. LNCS, vol. 3608, pp. 306–317. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  7. Ausiello, G., Demange, M., Laura, L., Paschos, V.: Algorithms for the on-line quota traveling salesman problem. Inf. Process. Lett. 92(2), 89–94 (2004)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  8. Ausiello, G., Feuerstein, E., Leonardi, S., Stougie, L., Talamo, M.: Algorithms for the on-line travelling salesman. Algorithmica 29(4), 560–581 (2001)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  9. Becchetti, L., Leonardi, S.: Nonclairvoyant scheduling to minimize the total flow time on single and parallel machines. Journal of the ACM 51(4), 517–539 (2004)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  10. Becchetti, L., Leonardi, S., Marchetti-Spaccamela, A., Pruhs, K.: Semiclairvoyant scheduling. Theoretical Computer Science 324(2-3), 325–335 (2004)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  11. Belady, L.: A study of replacement algorithms for a virtual-storage computer. IBM Sys. J. 5(2), 78–101 (1966)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Blom, M., Krumke, S.O., de Paepe, W.E., Stougie, L.: The online-TSP against fair adversaries. INFORMS Journal on Computing 13, 138–148 (2001)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  13. Bonifaci, V., Lipmann, M., Stougie, L.: Online multi-server dial-a-ride problems. Technical Report 02-06, Department of Computer and Systems Science, University of Rome La Sapienza, Rome, Italy (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Borodin, A., El-Yaniv, R.: Online Computation and Competitive Analysis. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1998)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  15. Chen, B., Vestjens, A.P.A.: Scheduling on identical machines: How good is LPT in an on-line setting? Operations Research Letters 21, 165–169 (1998)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  16. Correa, J.R., Wagner, M.R.: LP-based online scheduling: From single to parallel machines. In: Jünger, M., Kaibel, V. (eds.) IPCO 2005. LNCS, vol. 3509, pp. 196–209. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  17. de Paepe, W.: Complexity Results and Competitive Analysis for Vehicle Routing Problems. PhD thesis, Technical University of Eindhoven (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Feuerstein, E., Stougie, L.: On-line single-server dial-a-ride problems. Theoretical Computer Science 268, 91–105 (2001)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  19. Fiat, A., Woeginger, G.J. (eds.): Online Algorithms: The State of the Art. Springer, Heidelberg (1998)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  20. Garg, N.: A 3-approximation for the minimum tree spanning k vertices. In: Proc. 37th Symp. Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS), pp. 302–309 (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Goemans, M., Kleinberg, J.: An improved approximation ratio for the minimum latency problem. Mathematical Programming 82(1), 111–124 (1998)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  22. Graham, R.L.: Bounds for certain multiprocessing anomalies. Bell System Technical Journal 45, 1563–1581 (1966)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Grove, E.F.: Online bin packing with lookahead. In: SODA 1995: Proceedings of the sixth annual ACM-SIAM symposium on Discrete algorithms. Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, pp. 430–436 (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Hauptmeier, D., Krumke, S.O., Rambau, J.: The online dial-a-ride problem under reasonable load. In: Bongiovanni, G., Petreschi, R., Gambosi, G. (eds.) CIAC 2000. LNCS, vol. 1767, pp. 125–136. Springer, Heidelberg (2000)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  25. Irani, S.: Coloring inductive graphs on-line. Algorithmica 11(1), 53–72 (1994)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  26. Jaillet, P., Wagner, M.: Online routing problems: Value of advanced information and improved competitive ratios. Under review, Transportation Science (2005), Available at http://web.mit.edu/jaillet/www/general/publications.html

  27. Jünger, M., Reinelt, G., Rinaldi, G.: The traveling salesman problem. In: Ball, M.O., Magnanti, T., Monma, C.L., Nemhauser, G. (eds.) Network Models, Handbook on Operations Research and Management Science, vol. 7, pp. 225–230. Elsevier, North Holland (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Kao, M.-Y., Tate, S.R.: Online matching with blocked input. Inf. Process. Lett. 38(3), 113–116 (1991)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  29. Koutsoupias, E., Papadimitriou, C.: On the k-server conjecture. Journal of the ACM 42, 971–983 (1995)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  30. Krumke, S.O.: Online optimization: Competitive analysis and beyond. Habilitation Thesis, Technical University of Berlin (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  31. Krumke, S.O., de Paepe, W.E., Poensgen, D., Stougie, L.: News from the online traveling repairman. In: Proc. 28th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP), pp. 487–499 (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  32. Krumke, S.O., Laura, L., Lipmann, M., Marchetti-Spaccamela, A., de Paepe, W.E., Poensgen, D., Stougie, L.: Non-abusiveness helps: an o(1)-competitive algorithm for minimizing the maximum flow time in the online traveling salesman problem. In: Jansen, K., Leonardi, S., Vazirani, V.V. (eds.) APPROX 2002. LNCS, vol. 2462, pp. 200–214. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  33. Laura, L.: Risoluzione on-line di problemi dial-a-ride Master’s thesis. University of Rome, La Sapienza (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  34. Lipmann, M.: On-Line Routing. PhD thesis, Technical University of Eindhoven (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  35. Lipmann, M., Lu, X., de Paepe, W., Sitters, R., Stougie, L.: On-line dial-a-ride problems under a restricted information model. In: Möhring, R.H., Raman, R. (eds.) ESA 2002. LNCS, vol. 2461, pp. 674–685. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  36. Motwani, R., Phillips, S., Torng, E.: Non-clairvoyant scheduling. Theoretical Computer Science 130(1), 17–47 (1994)

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  37. Pruhs, K., Sgall, J., Torng, E.: Online scheduling. In: Fiat, A., Woeginger, G.J. (eds.) Online Algorithms: The State of the Art, pp. 159–176. Springer, Heidelberg (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  38. Sgall, J.: On-line scheduling. In: Fiat, A., Woeginger, G.J. (eds.) Online Algorithms: The State of the Art, pp. 196–231. Springer, Heidelberg (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  39. Sitters, R., Stougie, L.: The minimum latency problem is np-hard for weighted trees. In: Proc. 9th Integer Programming and Combinatorial Optimization Conference, pp. 230–239 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  40. Sleator, D., Tarjan, R.E.: Amortized efficiency of list update and paging rules. Communications of the ACM 28(2), 202–208 (1985)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  41. Subramani, K.: Totally clairvoyant scheduling with relative timing constraints. In: Seventh International Conference on Verification, Model (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  42. Vestjens, A.P.A.: On-line Machine Scheduling. PhD thesis, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands (1997)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer and Systems Science, University of Rome, “La Sapienza”, Via Salaria, 113, 00198, Roma, Italy

    Giorgio Ausiello, Luca Allulli, Vincenzo Bonifaci & Luigi Laura

  2. Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Eindhoven University of Technology, PO Box 513, 5600 MB, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Vincenzo Bonifaci

Authors
  1. Giorgio Ausiello
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Luca Allulli
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Vincenzo Bonifaci
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Luigi Laura
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Sciences Department, University of Wisconsin, 53706, Madison, WI, USA

    Jin-Yi Cai

  2. School of Mathematics, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT, Leeds, U.K.

    S. Barry Cooper

  3. State Key Lab. of Computer Science, Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences,  

    Angsheng Li

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Ausiello, G., Allulli, L., Bonifaci, V., Laura, L. (2006). On-Line Algorithms, Real Time, the Virtue of Laziness, and the Power of Clairvoyance. In: Cai, JY., Cooper, S.B., Li, A. (eds) Theory and Applications of Models of Computation. TAMC 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3959. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11750321_1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11750321_1

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-34021-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-34022-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation