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Paper details
Number 2 - June 2024
Volume 34 - 2024
Assignment of tasks to machines under data replication with a tie to Steiner systems
Paweł Wojciechowski, Marta Kasprzak
Abstract
In the paper a problem of assignment of tasks to machines is formulated and solved, where a criterion of data replication
is used and a large size of data imposes additional constraints. This problem is met in practice when dealing with large
genomic files or other types of vast data. The necessity of comparing all pairs of files within a big set of DNA sequencing
results, which we collected, maintained, and analyzed within a national genomic project, brought us to the proposed results.
This problem resembles that of generating a particular Steiner system, and a mechanism observed there is employed in one
of our algorithms. Based on the problem complexity, we propose two heuristic algorithms, which work very well even for
instances with tight constraints and a heterogeneous environment defined. In addition, we propose a simplified method,
nevertheless capable of finding very good solutions and surpassing the algorithms in some special cases. The methods are
validated in tests on a wide set of instances, where values of parameters reflect our real-world application and where their
usefulness is proven.
Keywords
task assignment, genomic data processing, integer linear programming, Steiner system, heuristic algorithm