The Real-Time Computing Laboratory, Software Predictability Group
Software Performance Control
Sponsor: NSF
Many modern applications, such as multimedia streaming, embedded
real-time computing, reliable transaction processing,
web hosting, and e-commerce
require some form of performance guarantees. Two forms of performance
guarantees have been investigated in prior literature; namely
absolute and statistical. In this project, we investigate
a different form we call convergence guarantees.
These guarantees are softer than deterministic but offer more
information on transient behavior than statistical.
In essence a convergence guarantee states that the system will
converge to the desired specifications under certain conditions and within
a specificed convergence envelope. Control theory is used as the
underlying theoretic engine to provide convergence guarantees.
The intuitive reason why performance of
computing services can be modeled within a control-theoretic
framework is because this performance depends on queueing delays at
different computing resources (e.g., CPU, sockets, semaphores, network).
Queues act as integrators of flows. Hence the computing system can be
modeled by differential equations amenable to control-theoretic analysis.
Control systems have traditionally been employed in industry to
manipulate the value of controlled system parameters. In particular,
robust control and adaptive control theory deal with the problem of
achieving a desired system performance in the absence of complete
knowedge of controlled system dynamics. We are interested
in applying elements of these theories in the Internet application
domain to control the behavior of distributed performance-critical
services in the absence of good system models and a priori information
on load and resource usage patterns.
Software:
To provide one initial embodiment of the analytic framework,
Ronghua Zhang, my former Ph.D. student
(co-advised with Jack Stankovic), developed a middleware service called ControlWare for software
performance control. It can be downloaded from the software link on his web-page.
Publications:
-
Gang Zhou, Chengdu Huang, Sang Son, Tarek Abdelzaher, Jack Stankovic,
"Load Balancing in Bounded-Latency Content Distribution,"
IEEE Real-time Systems Symposium, Miami, Florida, December 2005.
- Chenyang Lu, Ying Lu, Tarek F. Abdelzaher, John A. Stankovic, Sang H. Son,
``Feedback Control Architecture and Design Methodology for Service Delay
Guarantees in Web Servers,'' IEEE Transactions on Parallel and
Distributed Systems, to appear in 2005.
- Chengdu Huang and Tarek Abdelzaher, ``Bounded-Latency
Content Distribution: Feasibility and Evaluation,'' IEEE Transactions on
Computers, to appear in 2005.
- Chengdu Huang, Seejo Sebastine, Tarek Abdelzaher, ``Design,
Implementation and Evaluation of a Real-Time Active Content
Distribution Service,''
Journal of Real-time Systems, Vol. 30, No. 1-2,
May 2005.
- Ronghua Zhang, Sujay Parekh,
Yixin Diao, Maheswaran Surendra,
Tarek Abdelzaher, John Stankovic, ``Control of Weighted
Fair Queueing: Modeling, Implementation, and
Experiences,'' 9th IFIP/IEEE International
Symposium on Integrated Network Management,
Nice, France, May 2005.
-
Chengdu Huang, Seejo Sebastine and Tarek Abdelzaher,
``An Architecture for On-Demand
Active Web Content Replication,''
16th Euromicro Conference on
Real-Time Systems, Catania, Italy, July 2004.
-
Dan Henriksson, Ying Lu, Tarek Abdelzaher,
``Improved Prediction for Web Server
Delay Control,'' 16th Euromicro Conference on
Real-Time Systems, Catania, Italy, July 2004.
-
Chengdu Huang and Tarek Abdelzaher, ``Towards Content Distribution
Networks with Latency Guarantees,''
IWQoS, Montreal, Canada, June, 2004.
-
Tarek Abdelzaher, Ying Lu, Ronghua Zhang, Dan Henriksson,
``Practical Application of Control
Theory to Web Services,'' Invited paper,
American Control Conference, Boston, MA,
June 2004.
- Ying Lu, Tarek F. Abdelzaher, Avneesh Saxena,
``Design, Implementation,
and Evaluation of Differentiated Caching Services,''
IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems
Vol. 15, No. 5, pp. 440-452, May 2004.
-
Ronghua Zhang, Tarek Abdelzaher, John Stankovic,
``Efficient TCP
Connection Failover in Server Clusters,''
Infocom, Hong Kong, March 2004.
-
Vivek Sharma, Arun Thomas, Tarek Abdelzaher, Kevin Skadron,
``Power-aware QoS
Management in Web Servers,''
Real-Time Systems Symposium, Cancun, Mexico,
December 2003.
Best Student Paper Award.
-
Ying Lu, Tarek Abdelzaher, Chenyang Lu, Lui Sha, Xue Liu,
``Feedback Control with
Queueing-Theoretic Prediction for
Relative Delay Guarantees in Web Servers,'' Real-Time and
Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium, Toronto,
Canada, May 2003.
-
Ronghua Zhang, Tarek F. Abdelzaher, and John A. Stankovic,
``Kernel Support for Open QoS-Aware
Computing,''
Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications
Symposium, Toronto, Canada, May 2003.
-
Ying Lu, Tarek F. Abdelzaher, Gang Tao, ``Direct Adaptive
Control of a Web Cache System,'' American Control
Conference Denver, CO, June 2003.
- Tarek F. Abdelzaher, John A. Stankovic, Chenyang Lu, Ronghua Zhang,
and Ying Lu, ``Feedback Performance
Control in Software Services,'' IEEE Control Systems Magazine,
Vol 23, No. 3, June 2003.
- Tarek Abdelzaher, Kang G. Shin, Nina Bhatti,
``User-Level QoS-Adaptive Resource Management in Server
End-Systems,'' IEEE Transactions on Computers,
Vol. 52, No. 5, May 2003.
-
Lui Sha, Xue Liu, Ying Lu, Tarek Abdelzaher, ``Queuing Model
Based Network Server Performance Control,''
Real-Time Systems Symposium, Austin, TX, December
2002.
-
Ying Lu, Gang Tao, and Tarek Abdelzaher, ``LDU
Parametrized
Discrete Time Multivariable MRAC and Application to a Web Cache
System,'' IEEE Conference on Decision and Control,
Las Vegas, Nevada, December 2002.
-
Ronghua Zhang, Chenyang Lu, Tarek F. Abdelzaher, John A. Stankovic,
``ControlWare: A Middleware Architecture
for Feedback Control of Software Performance,''
International Conference on Distributed
Computing Systems, Vienna, Austria, July 2002.
-
Kyoung-Don Kang, Sang Son, John Stankovic, Tarek Abdelzaher,
``A QoS-Sensitive Approach for Timeliness and
Freshness Guarantees in Real-Time Databases,''
Euromicro, Vienna, Austria, June 2002.
-
Nicolas Christin, Jorg Liebeherr, Tarek Abdelzaher,
``A Quantitative
Assured Forwarding Service,'' IEEE INFOCOM,
New York, NY, June 2002.
-
Ying Lu, Chanyang Lu, Tarek Abdelzaher, Gang Tao,
``An
Adaptive Control Framework for QoS Guarantees and its
Application to Differentiated Caching Services,''
IWQoS, Miami Beach, FL, May 2002.
-
Sivakumar Velusamy, Karthik Sankaranarayanan, Dharmesh Parikh,
Tarek Abdelzaher, Kevin Skadron, ``Adaptive
Cache Decay using Feedback Control,''2nd Annual
Workshop on Memory Performance Issues Anchorage,
Alaska, May 2002.
-
Kevin Skadron, Tarek Abdelzaher, and Mircea Stan,
``Control-Theoretic
Techniques and Thermal RC Modeling for Accurate and Localized Dynamic
Thermal Mangement,'' International Symposium on High
Performance Computer Architecture, Cambridge, MA,
February 2002.
-
Tarek Abdelzaher, Kang G. Shin, Nina Bhatti,
``Performance Guarantees
for Web Server End-Systems: A Control-Theoretical Approach,''
IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems
, Vol. 13, No. 1, Jan 2002.
-
Seejo Sebastine, Kyoung-Don Kang, Tarek F. Abdelzaher, Sang H. Son,
``A Scalable Web-Based Real-Time Information
Distribution Service for Industrial Applications,'' The
27th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics
Society, Denver, Colorado, December 2001.
-
John Stankovic, Tian He, Tarek Abdelzaher, Mike Marley, Gang Tao,
Sang Son, ``Feedback Control
Scheduling in Distributed Systems,'' IEEE Real-Time
Systems Symposium, London, UK, December 2001.
-
Chenyang Lu, Tarek Abdelzaher, Jack Stankovic, Sang Son,
``A Feedback Control Approach for
Guaranteeing Relative Delays in Web Servers,''
IEEE Real-Time Technology and Applications
Symposium, TaiPei, Taiwan, June 2001.
-
Ying Lu, Avneesh Saxena, and Tarek F. Abdelzaher,
``Differentiated
Caching Services; A Control-Theoretical Approach,''
International
Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, Phoenix, Arizona,
April 2001.
-
Tarek F. Abdelzaher and Chenyang Lu,
``Modeling and Performance Control of Internet Servers,''
Invited Paper, 39th IEEE Conference on
Decision and Control, Sydney, Australia, December 2000.
-
Chenyang Lu, John A. Stankovic, Tarek F. Abdelzaher, Gang Tao,
Sang H. Son and Michael Marley,
``Performance Specifications and Metrics for Adaptive Real-Time
Systems,'' IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium,
Orlando, Florida, December 2000.
-
Tarek F. Abdelzaher,
``An Automoated Profiling Subsystem for QoS-Aware Services,''
IEEE Real-Time Technology and
Applications Symposium, Washington D.C., June 2000.
-
Tarek F. Abdelzaher and Kang G. Shin,
``QoS Provisioning with qContracts in Web and Multimedia Servers,''
IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium,
Pheonix, Arizona, December 1999.
-
Tarek F. Abdelzaher, Nina Bhatti,
``Adaptive Content Delivery for Web Server QoS,''
International Workshop on Quality of Service,
London, UK, June 1999.
-
Tarek F. Abdelzaher, Nina Bhatti,
``Web Content Adaptation to Improve Server Overload Behavior,''
International World Wide Web Conference,
Toronto, Canada, May 1999.
-
Tarek F. Abdelzaher, Kang G. Shin,
``End-host Architecture for QoS-Adaptive Communication,''
IEEE Real-Time Technology and
Applications Symposium, Denver, Colorado, June 1998.