CIF: Small: Foundations of Serverless Computing: Optimizing Latency and Utility

无服务器计算平台是云服务中增长最快的部分，预计在不久的将来将主导云计算。这些平台运行用户指定的功能，并自动管理用户的底层计算资源。无服务器计算因其易管理性、低成本、大规模可伸缩性和计算能力的灵活性，具有实时影响科学计算、大规模优化、深度神经网络(DNN)和视频编码等多个领域的潜力。然而，为了充分利用潜力，必须解决与无服务器计算的几个独特属性有关的几个根本挑战，即短暂的机器、低内存占用、沉重的通信成本和本质上不同的定价策略。该项目通过将分布式计算的尖端技术与编码理论、信息理论、优化和博弈论的创新概念相结合来解决这些独特的挑战。考虑到几乎每个人，无论是有意还是无意，都受益于云计算的有效性和无处不在，从网络搜索到在线交易，云计算已经覆盖了现代数字生活中的一切，这一点是对该项目更广泛的社会影响的最好评价。由于无服务器平台有望在不久的将来主导云计算，该项目有望通过提高云服务的效率和降低用户成本来提供显著的好处。该建议采用原则性和基础性的方法来最小化无服务器计算中的延迟和成本。这将导致由编码和信息论、资源分配和优化、随机化线性代数以及机制设计和博弈论等理论原理驱动的理论和算法的发展。该项目由两个主要部分组成：(A)健壮、高效和可大规模扩展的分布式计算算法，通过将编码计算的能力整合到优化框架中，实现无服务器系统中的延迟最小化；以及(B)成本最小化的最佳定价方案，该方案利用激励机制进行定价，使客户的总效用最大化，并使云服务提供商能够在服务质量和收入之间实现有利的权衡。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Serverless computing platforms represent the fastest growing segment of cloud services, and are predicted to dominate cloud computing in the near future. These platforms run user-specified functions and automatically manage the underlying compute resources for the users. Serverless computing has the potential to impact fields as diverse as scientific computing, large-scale optimization, deep neural networks (DNNs), and video encoding in real-time due to its ease of management, inexpensiveness, massive scalability and flexibility in terms of compute power. In order to harness the full potential, however, several fundamental challenges must be addressed concerning several unique attributes of serverless computing, namely ephemeral machines, low memory footprint, heavy communication costs, and substantially different pricing policies. This project approaches these unique challenges by combining cutting-edge techniques from distributed computing with innovative concepts from coding theory, information theory, optimization, and game theory. The broader societal impact of this project is best appreciated by considering that nearly everyone, knowingly or unknowingly, benefits from the efficacy and ubiquity of cloud computing which has come to underly everything in modern digital life from web searches to online transactions. As serverless platforms are expected to dominate cloud computing in the near future, this project is expected to provide significant benefits by increasing efficiencies and reducing the user costs of cloud services. This proposal takes a principled and foundational approach to minimizing latency and costs in serverless computing. This will lead to the development of theory and algorithms driven by theoretical principles which are informed by coding and information theory, resource allocation and optimization, randomized linear algebra, as well as mechanism design and game theory. The project consists of two major components: (a) Robust, efficient, and massively scalable distributed computing algorithms for latency minimization in serverless systems by integrating the power of coded computation into an optimization framework; and (b) Optimal pricing schemes for cost minimization, which leverage incentive mechanisms for pricing that maximize the total utility across customers, and enable cloud service providers to achieve favorable trade-offs between quality-of-service and revenue.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.