A Monarch Butterfly Optimization Approach to Dynamic Task Scheduling

In nature, the eastern North American monarch population is known for its southward migration during the late summer/autumn from the northern USA and southern Canada to Mexico, covering thousands of miles. By simplifying and idealizing the migration of monarch butterflies, a new kind of nature-inspired metaheuristic algorithm, called monarch butterfly optimization (MBO), a first of its kind, is proposed in this paper. In MBO, all the monarch butterfly individuals are located in two distinct lands, viz. southern Canada and the northern USA (Land 1) and Mexico (Land 2). Accordingly, the positions of the monarch butterflies are updated in two ways. Firstly, the offsprings are generated (position updating) by migration operator, which can be adjusted by the migration ratio. It is followed by tuning the positions for other butterflies by means of butterfly adjusting operator. In order to keep the population unchanged and minimize fitness evaluations, the sum of the newly generated butterflies in these two ways remains equal to the original population. In order to demonstrate the superior performance of the MBO algorithm, a comparative study with five other metaheuristic algorithms through thirty-eight benchmark problems is carried out. The results clearly exhibit the capability of the MBO method toward finding the enhanced function values on most of the benchmark problems with respect to the other five algorithms. Note that the source codes of the proposed MBO algorithm are publicly available at GitHub ( https://github.com/ggw0122/Monarch-Butterfly-Optimization , C++/MATLAB) and MATLAB Central ( http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/50828-monarch-butterfly-optimization , MATLAB).

Cloud computing and big data: Technologies and applications

Monarch butterfly optimization is inspired by the migration of monarch butterflies in nature: monarch butterflies in eastern North America migrate southward from northern United States and southern Canada to Mexico every summer/autumn. It is a new swarm intelligence metaheuristic algorithm, which is called monarch butterfly optimization (MBO). In MBO, the monarch butterfly population is ideally divided into two populations, one is located in southern Canada and northern United States (land 1), and the other is located in Mexico (land 2). We update the individuals in the population through migration and butterfly shape adjustment. To maintain the diversity of the population and minimize the fitness value, the total number of butterflies generated by the operation should be equal to the original population. In the experiment, MBO is compared with five metaheuristic algorithms through 38 test functions, especially applied to solve a large-scale 0-1 knapsack (KP) problem. Three groups of 15 large-scale 0-1 KP cases from 800 to 2000 dimensions are used to test. It is proved that MBO has strong advantages in solving global numerical optimization and engineering problems, which provides a reference for further discussion of MBO in the future.

As a significant subset of the family of discrete optimization problems, the 0-1 knapsack problem (0-1 KP) has received considerable attention among the relevant researchers. The monarch butterfly optimization (MBO) is a recent metaheuristic algorithm inspired by the migration behavior of monarch butterflies. The original MBO is proposed to solve continuous optimization problems. This paper presents a novel monarch butterfly optimization with a global position updating operator (GMBO), which can address 0-1 KP known as an NP-complete problem. The global position updating operator is incorporated to help all the monarch butterflies rapidly move towards the global best position. Moreover, a dichotomy encoding scheme is adopted to represent monarch butterflies for solving 0-1 KP. In addition, a specific two-stage repair operator is used to repair the infeasible solutions and further optimize the feasible solutions. Finally, Orthogonal Design (OD) is employed in order to find the most suitable parameters. Two sets of low-dimensional 0-1 KP instances and three kinds of 15 high-dimensional 0-1 KP instances are used to verify the ability of the proposed GMBO. An extensive comparative study of GMBO with five classical and two state-of-the-art algorithms is carried out. The experimental results clearly indicate that GMBO can achieve better solutions on almost all the 0-1 KP instances and significantly outperforms the rest.

Optimization of road space allocation (RSA) from a network perspective is computationally challenging. Analogues to the Network Design Problem (NDP), RSA can be classified as a NP-hard problem. In large scale networks when the number of alternatives increases exponentially, there is a need for an efficient method to reduce the number of alternatives as well as a computational approach to reduce the computer execution time of the analysis. A heuristic algorithm based on Genetic Algorithm (GA) is proposed to efficiently select Transit Priority Alternatives (TPAs). In order to reduce the execution time, the GA is modified to implement two parallel processing techniques: A High Performance Computing (HPC) technique using Multi-threading (MT) and a High Throughput Computing (HTC) technique. The advantages and limitations of the MT and HTC techniques are discussed. Moreover, the proposed framework allows for a TPA to be analyzed by a commercial package which is a significant provision for large scale networks in practice.KeywordsCentral Processing UnitHigh Performance ComputingNetwork Design ProblemLarge Scale NetworkParallel Genetic AlgorithmThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Inspired by the phenomenon of migration of monarch butterflies, Wang et al. developed a novel promising swarm intelligence algorithm, called monarch butterfly optimization (MBO), for addressing unconstrained low-dimensional optimization problems. In this paper, we firstly extend the application area of the basic MBO to solve the constrained optimization problems. At the same time, the crossover operator originally used in evolutionary algorithms (EAs) is incorporated into the butterfly adjusting operator in order to strengthen the exploitation of the basic MBO algorithm. Furthermore, the crossover rate is self-adaptively adjusted according to the fitness of the corresponding individual instead of the fixed crossover rate used in EAs. For migration operator, only individuals having better fitness are accepted and passed to the next generation instead of accepting all the individuals in the basic MBO algorithm. After incorporated all the modifications into the basic MBO algorithm, an improved MBO algorithm with self-adaptive crossover namely SACMBO, is proposed for unstrained and constrained optimization problems. Finally, the proposed SACMBO algorithm is further used to solve 22 unstrained optimization problems (with dimension of 100, 300, 500, 1000, and 1500) and 28 constrained real-parameter optimization functions from CEC 2017 competition (with dimension of 50 and 100), respectively. The experimental results indicate that the proposed SACMBO algorithm outperforms the basic MBO and other five state-of-the-art metaheuristic algorithms.

The computing method of the average optimal position is one of the most important factors that affect the optimization performance of the QPSO algorithm. Therefore, a particle position weight computing method based on particle fitness value grading is proposed, which is called HWQPSO (hierarchical weight QPSO). In this method, the higher the fitness value of a particle, the higher the level of the particle, and the greater the weight. Particles at different levels have different weights, while particles at the same level have the same weight. Through this method, the excellent particles have higher average optimal position weight, and at the same time, the absolute weight of a few particles is avoided, so that the algorithm can quickly and stably converge to the optimal solution, and improve the optimization ability and efficiency of the algorithm. In order to verify the effectiveness of the method, five standard test functions are selected to test the performance of HWQPSO, QPSO, DWC-QPSO and LTQPSO algorithm, and the algorithms are applied to the task scheduling of the cloud computing platform. Through the test experiment and application comparison, the results show that the HWQPSO algorithm can converge to the optimal solution of the test function faster than the other three algorithms. It can also find the task scheduling scheme with the shortest time consumption and the most balanced computing resource load in the cloud platform. In the experiment, compared with QPSO, DWC-QPSO and LTQPSO algorithm, HWQPSO execution time of the maximum task scheduling was reduced by 35%, 23% and 21% respectively.

The ASC Fortran compiler and the methods of optimizing the execution times of compiled programs are described. Language extensions and compiler organization are briefly outlined. Traditional scalar optimization techniques and techniques to detect and generate vector operations from ANS standard Fortran source code are discussed. Emphasis is placed on optimal generation of vector operations and parallel processing. The vector and parallel processing techniques described here are applicable to a wide variety of vector or parallel processing machines. Numerous examples are discussed to demonstrate many of the capabilities and features of the compiler.

Parallel processing is a promising technique for reducing the execution time of a large and complex wireless network simulation. In this article, a parallel processing technique is presented for time-driven simulations of large and complex wireless networks. The technique explicitly considers the physical-layer details of wireless network simulators such as shadowing and co-channel interference. The technique uses multiple processors interconnected with highspeed links. Principles and issues are elaborated, including workload partitioning, synchronization, and database design. Numerical results from two different wireless network simulators employing the technique are presented to demonstrate the performance of the technique. The results indicate that the technique can significantly improve the run-time performance of time-driven simulations of large and complicated wireless networks of different types.

Objective: To develop a task scheduling algorithm that efficiently approximates solutions for the multi-objective task scheduling problem in a cloud environment, optimizing resource utilization, execution time, cost, and overall system performance. Method: A Modified Sunflower Optimization Algorithm for Task Scheduling (MSOTS) is proposed to improve efficiency in cloud environments. The traditional sunflower optimization algorithm is enhanced with Levy flight, crossover, and mutation operations to achieve a better balance between exploration and exploitation while preventing entrapment in local minima. These enhancements help improve convergence speed and solution quality. CloudSim is utilized for comprehensive performance evaluation, comparing MSOTS with existing algorithms in terms of execution time, cost, and resource utilization. The randomly generated dataset (500 tasks and 50 VMs) is used for analyze the performance of the MSOTS. Findings: The results demonstrate that MSOA significantly reduces makespan and cost while enhancing resource utilization. Specifically, the proposed method reduces makespan by 22.43% compared to PSO and 14.95% compared to SOA. Additionally, cost is reduced by 14.47% and 10.38% compared to PSO and SOA, respectively, while resource utilization increases by 3.89% and 2.51% over these methods. These findings indicate that MSOA effectively improves task scheduling performance in terms of makespan, cost efficiency, and resource utilization, making it a promising approach for cloud computing environments. Novelty: The MSOA is integrated with single-point crossover, swap mutation, and Lévy flight to update the solution, which prevents entrapment in local minima and premature convergence and enhances task scheduling efficiency, optimizes resource allocation, minimizes execution time, and reduces overall costs in cloud computing environments. Keywords: Meta-heuristic, Sunflower optimization, Levy flight, Crossover, Mutation

Task scheduling is an essential component of any distributed system because it routes tasks to appropriate resources for execution, such as grids, clouds, and peer-to-peer networks. Common scheduling algorithms include downsides, such as high temporal complexity, non-simultaneous processing of input tasks, and longer program execution times. Exploration-based scheduling algorithms prioritize tasks using a variety of methods, resulting in long execution times on heterogeneous distributed computing systems. As a result, task prioritization becomes a bottleneck in such systems. It is appropriate to prioritize tasks with the shortest execution time using faster algorithms. The genetic algorithm (GA) is one of the evolutionary approaches used to solve complex problems quickly. This paper proposes a parallel GA with a MapReduce architecture for scheduling jobs on cloud computing with various priority queues. The fundamental aim of this study is to employ a MapReduce architecture to minimize the total execution time of the task scheduling process in the cloud computing environment. The proposed method accomplishes task scheduling in two stages: first, the GA was used in conjunction with heuristic techniques to assign tasks to processors, and then the GA was used in conjunction with the MapReduce framework to assign jobs to processors. In our experiments, we consider heterogeneous resources that differ in their ability to execute various tasks, as well as running a job on different resources with varying execution durations. The results show that the proposed method outperforms other algorithms such as particle swarm optimization, whale optimization algorithm, moth-flame optimization, and intelligent water drops.

Task scheduling method of cloud computing is the key step to achieve its high performance computing. In order to effectively solve the problem of task scheduling in cloud computing, this paper proposes a novel dynamic task scheduling algorithm based on improved genetic algorithm. On the basis of the genetic algorithm, the proposed algorithm gives full consideration to the dynamic characteristics of the cloud computing environment. The CloudSim simulation platform is selected for simulation; experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively improve the throughput of cloud computing systems, and can significantly reduce the execution time of task scheduling.

Due to the huge volume and extreme complexity in online game data collections, selecting essential features for the analysis of massive game logs is not only necessary, but also challenging. This study develops and implements a new XSEDE-enabled tool, FeatureSelector, which uses the parallel processing techniques on high performance computers to perform feature selection. By calculating probability distance measures, based on K-L divergence, this tool quantifies the distance between variables in data sets, and provides guidance for feature selection in massive game log analysis. This tool has helped researchers choose the high-quality and discriminative features from over 300 variables, and select the top pairs of countries with the greatest differences from 231 country-pairs in a 500 GB game log data set. Our study shows that (1) K-L divergence is a good measure for correctly and efficiently selecting important features, and (2) the high performance computing platform supported by XSEDE has substantially accelerated the feature selection processes by over 30 times. Besides demonstrating the effectiveness of FeatureSelector in a cross-country analysis using high performance computing, this study also highlights some lessons learned for feature selection in social science research and some experience on applying parallel processing techniques in intensive data analysis.

Fog computing is one of the rapidly growing platforms with an exponentially increasing demand for real-time data processing. The fog computing market is expected to reach USD 8358 million by the year 2030 with a compound annual growth of 50%. The wide adaptation of fog computing by the industries worldwide is due to the advantages like reduced latency, high operational efficiency, and high-level data privacy. The highly distributed and heterogeneous nature of fog computing leads to significant challenges related to resource management, data security, task scheduling, data privacy, and interoperability. The task typically represents a job generated by the IoT device. The action indicates the way of executing the tasks whose decision is taken by the scheduler. Task scheduling is one of the prominent issues in fog computing which includes the process of effectively scheduling the tasks among fog devices to effectively utilize the resources and meet the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements of the applications. Improper task scheduling leads to increased execution time, overutilization of resources, data loss, and poor scalability. Hence there is a need to do proper task scheduling to make optimal task distribution decisions in a highly dynamic resource-constrained heterogeneous fog computing environment. Flow Q learning (FQL) is a potential form of reinforcement learning algorithm which uses the flow matching policy for action distribution. It can handle complex forms of data and multimodal action distribution which make it suitable for the highly volatile fog computing environment. However, flow Q learning struggles to achieve a proper trade-off between the expressive flow model and a reduction in the Q function, as it relies on a one-step optimization policy that introduces bias into the estimated Q function value. The Tiny Language Model (TLM) is a significantly smaller form of a Large Language Model (LLM) which is designed to operate over the device-constrained environment. It can provide fair and systematic guidance to disproportionally biased deep learning models. In this paper a novel TLM guided flow Q learning framework is designed to address the task scheduling problem in fog computing. The neutrality and fine-tuning capability of the TLM is combined with the quick generable ability of the FQL algorithm. The framework is simulated using the Simcan2Fog simulator considering the dynamic nature of fog environment under finite and infinite resources. The performance is found to be good with respect to parameters like execution time, accuracy, response time, and latency. Further the results obtained are validated using the expected value analysis method which is found to be satisfactory.

Today, based on fast development especially in Network-on-Chip (NoC)-based many-core systems, the task scheduling problem plays a critical role in high-performance computing. It is an NP-hard problem. The complexity increases further when the scheduling problem is applied to heterogeneous platforms. Exploring the whole search space in order to find the optimal solution is not time efficient, thus metaheuristics are mostly used to find a near-optimal solution in a reasonable amount of time. We propose a compound method to select the best near-optimal task schedule in the heterogeneous platform in order to minimize the execution time. For this, we combine a new parallel meta-heuristic method with a greedy scheme. We introduce a novel metaheuristic method for near-optimal scheduling that can provide performance guarantees for multiple applications implemented on a shared platform. Applications are modeled as directed acyclic task graphs (DAG) for execution on a heterogeneous NoC-based many-core platform with given communication costs. We introduce an order-based encoding especially for pipelined operation that improves (decreases) execution time by more than 46%. Moreover, we present a novel multi-population method inspired by both genetic and imperialist competitive algorithms specialized for the scheduling problem, improving the convergence policy and selection pressure. The potential of the approach is demonstrated by experiments using a Sobel filter, SUSAN filter, RASTA-PLP, and JPEG encoder as real-world case studies.