The Power Of Limited Flexibility And Resource Pooling

该奖项为发展大规模服务系统的数学理论提供资金，该系统使用灵活的资源来处理一系列不同的传入任务。与分散的、不灵活的系统相比，具有完全灵活资源的集中式系统(所谓的完全资源池)通常提供显著的性能改进，其中每个资源专用于特定类型的任务。然而，完全的灵活性通常会带来高昂的基础设施成本。该项目将侧重于查明和分析在哪些情况下，只有有限的灵活性(即，当只有一小部分可用资源是灵活的)才能实现充分灵活性几乎所有的绩效好处。特别是，该项目将研究涉及部分柔性和/或部分信息共享的各种数学模型，并进行性能分析，重点放在涉及非平凡动态的系统上，并在大系统的限制下得出扩展规律。部分柔性在大量重要的应用领域，如数据中心、服务器群、传感器网络、供应链和医疗人员配备，具有以适度的资本和运营成本大幅提高性能的潜力。如果成功，这项研究的结果(将通过学术出版物、研讨会和学生培训来传播)将为如何设计、设计和高效运行部分灵活的系统提供有价值的见解和指导。

This award provides funding for the development of a mathematical theory of large-scale service systems that employ flexible resources in order to process a sequence of diverse incoming tasks. Centralized systems with fully flexible resources (so-called complete resource pooling) generally offer significant performance improvements when compared to decentralized and inflexible systems in which each resource is dedicated to a specific type of tasks. However, full flexibility typically entails a heavy infrastructural cost. The project will focus on identifying and analyzing situations where a limited amount of flexibility (i.e., when only a small fraction of the available resources are flexible) achieves almost all of the performance benefits of full flexibility. In particular, the project will study various mathematical models involving partial flexibility and/or partial information sharing, and carry out a performance analysis, with a focus on systems that involve nontrivial dynamics, and in the limit of large systems, in order to derive scaling laws.Partial flexibility has the potential for major performance improvements, at moderate capital and operating cost, in a vast array of important application domains, such as data centers, server farms, sensor networks, supply chains, and medical staffing. If successful, the results of this research (to be disseminated through scholarly publications, seminars, and the training of students) will provide valuable insights and guidance on how to architect, design, and operate efficiently partially flexible systems.