<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div dir="auto" class="" style="word-wrap: break-word; line-break: after-white-space;"><font face="Arial" class=""><b class=""><font color="#000000" class=""><span style="font-size: 14px;" class="">University of Chicago </span></font></b></font></div><div dir="auto" class="" style="word-wrap: break-word; line-break: after-white-space;"><font face="Arial" class=""><b class=""><font color="#000000" class=""><span style="font-size: 14px;" class="">Computer Science Department</span><br class=""></font></b><br class=""><br class=""><b class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 14px;">Hongzi Mao</b><br class=""><span class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 14px;">PhD Student MIT</span><br class=""><br class=""><b class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 14px;">Monday, September 23, 2019 at 1:00 - 2:00 pm<br class=""></b><font color="#000000" class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span class="" style="font-size: 14px;"><b class="">JCL Room 223</b></span></font><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><b class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 14px;">Title:</b></font></div><div dir="auto" class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); word-wrap: break-word; line-break: after-white-space;"><font face="Arial" class=""><span style="font-size: 15.333333015441895px;" class="">Learning to Schedule from Experience</span><br class=""><b class="" style="font-size: 14px;"><font face="Arial" class="" style="font-weight: normal;"><b class=""><br class=""></b></font></b></font></div><div dir="auto" class="" style="word-wrap: break-word; line-break: after-white-space;"><font face="Arial" class=""><span class=""><font face="Arial" class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 14px;"><b class="">Abstract:</b><br class=""></font><div class=""><font color="#000000" class=""><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 14px;" class="">Efficiently scheduling data processing jobs on distributed compute clusters currently requires hand-tuned complex algorithms. In this work, we show that modern machine learning techniques can generate highly-efficient scheduling policies automatically. Decima uses reinforcement learning (RL) and neural networks to learn workload-specific scheduling algorithms without any human instruction beyond a high-level objective. However, off-the-shelf RL techniques cannot handle the complexity and scale of the scheduling problem. To build Decima, we had to develop new representations for jobs' dependency graphs, design scalable RL models, and invent new RL training methods to handle continuous stochastic job arrivals. Our prototype integration with Spark on a 25-node cluster shows that Decima improves average job completion time by at least 21% over human-engineered scheduling heuristics, achieving up to 2× improvement during periods of high cluster load.</span></font></div><font face="Arial" class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 14px;"><br class=""><b class="">Bio:</b><br class=""></font><span class=""><font color="#000000" class=""><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 14px;" class="">Hongzi Mao is a PhD student at the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department of MIT advised by Mohammad Alizadeh. His research interests focus on applying reinforcement learning to build and optimize data-driven networked resource management systems. His work also contributes to the development of new machine learning algorithms for broader applications beyond computer systems. He is a recipient of ICML'19 best workshop paper award, Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship and Andrew (1956) and Erna Viterbi Fellowship.</span></font><br class=""></span><div class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span class="" style="font-size: 14px;"><span class=""><b class=""><br class=""></b></span></span></div><div class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span class="" style="font-size: 14px;"><span class=""><b class="">Host: Heather Zheng and Junchen Jiang</b></span></span></div><div class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span class="" style="font-size: 14px;"><span class=""><b class=""><br class=""></b></span></span></div><div class="" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span class="" style="font-size: 14px;"><span class=""><b class=""></b></span></span></div></span></font></div></div></body></html>