Rethinking Datacenter Management with Game Theory

Abstract

Sharing datacenter hardware improves energy efficiency, but whether strategic users participate in shared systems depends on management policies. Users who dislike allocations may refuse to participate and deploy private, less-efficient systems. We rethink systems management, drawing on game theory to model strategic behavior and incentivize participation. We illustrate this perspective for long-standing challenges in datacenter architecture.  For resource allocation, we define utility functions and identify provably fair allocations that incentivize users to share cache capacity, memory bandwidth, and processor cores.  For power delivery, we design sprinting games to produce equilibria in which users selfishly draw power for performance boosts yet avoid oversubscribing the shared supply. These solutions provide foundations for rigorously managing systems shared by strategic, competitive participants.

Biography

Benjamin C. Lee is a Professor of Electrical and Systems Engineering and of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also a Visiting Research Scientist in Foundational Artificial Intelligence Research at Meta. Dr. Lee’s research focuses on computer architecture, energy efficiency, and security. He builds interdisciplinary links to machine learning and algorithmic game theory to better design and manage computer systems. His research has been recognized by IEEE Micro Top Picks, Communications of the ACM Research Highlights, as well as publication honors from the ASPLOS, HPCA, MICRO, and SC conferences. Dr. Lee was an Assistant and then Associate Professor at Duke University. He received his post-doctorate in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, Ph.D. in Computer Science from Harvard University, and B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Lee received the NSF Computing Innovation Fellowship, NSF CAREER Award, and Google Faculty Research Award. He is an ACM Distinguished Scientist and an IEEE Senior Member.