Competitive Paging Algorithms

TL;DR

This paper introduces a simple randomized online paging algorithm called the marking algorithm, which achieves an O(log k) competitive ratio, significantly better than deterministic algorithms with a ratio of k.

Contribution

The paper presents the marking algorithm and proves its competitive ratio is O(log k), advancing the understanding of randomized algorithms for paging.

Findings

Marking algorithm is a simple randomized approach.

Competitive ratio of the marking algorithm is O(log k).

Deterministic algorithms cannot do better than ratio k.

Abstract

The paging problem is that of deciding which pages to keep in a memory of k pages in order to minimize the number of page faults. This paper introduces the marking algorithm, a simple randomized on-line algorithm for the paging problem, and gives a proof that its performance guarantee (competitive ratio) is O(log k). In contrast, no deterministic on-line algorithm can have a performance guarantee better than k.