Multicore Paging Algorithms Cannot Be Competitive

Shahin Kamali, Helen Xu

Abstract: Every processor with multiple cores sharing a cache needs to implement a page-replacement algorithm. Lopez-Ortiz and Salinger [ITCS 2012] demonstrated that competitive ratio of canonical paging algorithms such as Least-Recently-Used (LRU) and Furthest-In-Future (FIF) grows with the length of the input. In this paper, we answer an open question about the existence of competitive multicore paging algorithms in the negative. Specifically, we show that all lazy algorithms, which include all practical algorithms, cannot be competitive against the optimal offline algorithm.