Soft, Real-Time, Distributed Graph Coloring using Decentralized, Synchronous, Stochastic, Iterative-Repair, Anytime Algorithms

Soft, real-time distributed graph coloring is presented as a simplification of the problem of distributed resource management in an environment where communication is expensive and subject to relatively high latency. The resources are subject to dynamic task sets that may produce critical or super-critical loading – the objective is to quickly compute reasonable schedules for the resources that accomplish a satisfactory fraction of the task set. A class of simple, decentralized, anytime, approximate colorers is presented, together with a framework for assessing performance, and representative results from performance experiments using a simulator. This work is sponsored in part by DARPA through the "Autonomous Negotiating Teams" program under contract #F30602-00-C-0014, monitored by the Air Force Research Laboratory. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or the U.S. Government. * The "Related Work" section was added in June 2001. SOFT, REAL-TIME, DISTRIBUTED GRAPH COLORING