Amdahl's Law in the Datacenter Era: A Market for Fair Processor Allocation

Abstract

We present a processor allocation framework that uses Amdahl's Law to model parallel performance and a market mechanism to allocate cores. First, we propose the Amdahl utility function and demonstrate its accuracy when modeling performance from processor core allocations. Second, we design a market based on Amdahl utility that optimizes users' bids for processors based on workload parallelizability. The framework uses entitlements to guarantee fairness yet outperforms existing proportional share algorithms.