BARC talk by Nikhil Ayyadevara

Wednesday, 30 March 2022, Nikhil Ayyadevara, student at Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, will give a talk on "The Randomized Competitive Ratio of Weighted k-Server Is at Least Exponential".

Titel:
The Randomized Competitive Ratio of Weighted k-Server Is at Least Exponential

Abstract:
The weighted k-server problem is a natural generalization of the k-server problem in which the cost incurred in moving a server is the distance traveled times the weight of the server. Even after almost three decades since the seminal work of Fiat and Ricklin (1994), the competitive ratio of this problem remains poorly understood even on the simplest class of metric spaces – the uniform metric spaces. In particular, in the case of randomized algorithms against the oblivious adversary, neither a better upper bound that the doubly exponential deterministic upper bound, nor a better lower bound than the logarithmic lower bound of unweighted k-server, is known. In this paper, we make significant progress towards understanding the randomized competitive ratio of weighted k-server on uniform metrics. We cut down the triply exponential gap between the upper and lower bound to a singly exponential gap by proving that the competitive ratio is at least exponential in k, substantially improving on the previously known lower bound of about ln k.

Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.11119

Bio: Nikhil Ayyadevara is currently studying for a master's degree in computer science at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. His research has so far been focused on the k-server problem and online bin packing.