# On the Effect of Task-to-Worker Assignment in Distributed Computing Systems with Stragglers

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.02838 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.02838/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 8 Aug 2018.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Gradient Coding with Dynamic Clustering for Straggler-Tolerant Distributed Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01206/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We study the expected completion time of some recently proposed algorithms for distributed computing which redundantly assign computing tasks to multiple machines in order to tolerate a certain number of machine failures. We analytically show that not only the amount of redundancy but also the task-to-machine assignments affect the latency in a distributed system. We study systems with a fixed number of computing tasks that are split in possibly overlapping batches, and independent exponentially distributed machine service times. We show that, for such systems, the uniform replication of non- overlapping (disjoint) batches of computing tasks achieves the minimum expected computing time.