AI Surrogate Model for Distributed Computing Workloads

TL;DR

This paper introduces a generative surrogate modeling approach using diffusion models to simulate large-scale scientific workloads, enhancing data privacy and aiding optimization in distributed computing environments.

Contribution

It evaluates four generative models on real-world workload data, identifying TabDDPM as the most suitable for privacy-preserving data simulation.

Findings

SMOTE and TabDDPM produce data nearly indistinguishable from real data

SMOTE has the lowest privacy preservation among tested models

TabDDPM is identified as the best model for privacy-preserving workload data generation

Abstract

Large-scale international scientific collaborations, such as ATLAS, Belle II, CMS, and DUNE, generate vast volumes of data. These experiments necessitate substantial computational power for varied tasks, including structured data processing, Monte Carlo simulations, and end-user analysis. Centralized workflow and data management systems are employed to handle these demands, but current decision-making processes for data placement and payload allocation are often heuristic and disjointed. This optimization challenge potentially could be addressed using contemporary machine learning methods, such as reinforcement learning, which, in turn, require access to extensive data and an interactive environment. Instead, we propose a generative surrogate modeling approach to address the lack of training data and concerns about privacy preservation. We have collected and processed real-world job submission records, totaling more than two million jobs through 150 days, and applied four generative models for tabular data -- TVAE, CTAGGAN+, SMOTE, and TabDDPM -- to these datasets, thoroughly evaluating their performance. Along with measuring the discrepancy among feature-wise distributions separately, we also evaluate pair-wise feature correlations, distance to closest record, and responses to pre-trained models. Our experiments indicate that SMOTE and TabDDPM can generate similar tabular data, almost indistinguishable from the ground truth. Yet, as a non-learning method, SMOTE ranks the lowest in privacy preservation. As a result, we conclude that the probabilistic-diffusion-model-based TabDDPM is the most suitable generative model for managing job record data.