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Speaker:        Xin Li
                Department of Computer Science
                Hong Kong University of Science & Technology

Topic:          "Scheduling of Switches with Reconfiguration Delay"

Date:           Monday, 5 May 2003

Time:           4:00pm - 5:00pm

Venue:          Lecture Theater F
                (Leung Yat Sing Lecture Theater, near lift nos. 25/26)
                HKUST

ABSTRACT:

Using optical technology for the design of packet switches/routers offers
several advantages such as scalability, high bandwidth, low power
consumption and cost. However, reconfiguring the optical fabric of these
switches requires significant time under current technology (MEMs mirrors,
tunable elements, bubble switches, etc.). As a result, conventional
slot-by-slot scheduling may severely cripple the performance of these
optical switches due to the frequent fabric reconfiguration that may
entail. A more appropriate way is to use a Time Slot Assignment (TSA)
scheduling approach. The switch gathers the incoming packets periodically
and schedules them in batches, while trying to minimize their transmission
time. The transmission time includes the actual traffic-sending process
and the reconfiguration overhead. This Optical Switch Scheduling (OSS)
problem is NP-complete.

Earlier TSA algorithms normally assume the reconfiguration delay to be
either zero or infinity for simplicity. To this end, we propose a
practical algorithm, ADJUST, that breaks this limitation and self-adjusts
with different reconfiguration delay values. The algorithm guarantees 100%
throughput and bounded worst case delay. In addition, it outperforms
existing TSA algorithms across a large spectrum of reconfiguration values.


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Biography:

Xin Li is currently a Ph. D. student in the Department of Computer
Science, HKUST. Her research interests include scheduling and architecture
of high-performance switches. Currently she is working on the novel
algorithms for optical switch with reconfiguration delay.



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