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arXiv · 1804.04773

On the Efficiency of Localized Work Stealing

Warut Suksompong·Charles E. Leiserson·Tao B. Schardl
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Abstract

This paper investigates a variant of the work-stealing algorithm that we call the localized work-stealing algorithm. The intuition behind this variant is that because of locality, processors can benefit from working on their own work. Consequently, when a processor is free, it makes a steal attempt to get back its own work. We call this type of steal a steal-back. We show that the expected running time of the algorithm is $T_1/P+O(T_\infty P)$, and that under the "even distribution of free agents assumption", the expected running time of the algorithm is $T_1/P+O(T_\infty\lg P)$. In addition, we obtain another running-time bound based on ratios between the sizes of serial tasks in the computation. If $M$ denotes the maximum ratio between the largest and the smallest serial tasks of a processor after removing a total of $O(P)$ serial tasks across all processors from consideration, then the expected running time of the algorithm is $T_1/P+O(T_\infty M)$.

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Warut Suksompong, Charles E. Leiserson, Tao B. Schardl. 2018-04-13. On the Efficiency of Localized Work Stealing. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipl.2015.10.002

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