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Main Authors: Gurushankar, Keerthana, Singer, Noah G., Subercaseaux, Bernardo
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.16535
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author Gurushankar, Keerthana
Singer, Noah G.
Subercaseaux, Bernardo
author_facet Gurushankar, Keerthana
Singer, Noah G.
Subercaseaux, Bernardo
contents In the classical caching problem, when a requested page is not present in the cache (i.e., a "miss"), it is assumed to travel from the backing store into the cache "before" the next request arrives. However, in many real-life applications, such as content delivery networks, this assumption is unrealistic. The "delayed-hits" model for caching, introduced by Atre, Sherry, Wang, and Berger, accounts for the latency between a missed cache request and the corresponding arrival from the backing store. This theoretical model has two parameters: the "delay" $Z$, representing the ratio between the retrieval delay and the inter-request delay in an application, and the "cache size" $k$, as in classical caching. Classical caching corresponds to $Z=1$, whereas larger values of $Z$ model applications where retrieving missed requests is expensive. Despite the practical relevance of the delayed-hits model, its theoretical underpinnings are still poorly understood. We present the first tight theoretical guarantee for optimizing delayed-hits caching: The "Least Recently Used" algorithm, a natural, deterministic, online algorithm widely used in practice, is $O(Zk)$-competitive, meaning it incurs at most $O(Zk)$ times more latency than the (offline) optimal schedule. Our result extends to any so-called "marking" algorithm.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_16535
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Latency Guarantees for Caching with Delayed Hits
Gurushankar, Keerthana
Singer, Noah G.
Subercaseaux, Bernardo
Data Structures and Algorithms
In the classical caching problem, when a requested page is not present in the cache (i.e., a "miss"), it is assumed to travel from the backing store into the cache "before" the next request arrives. However, in many real-life applications, such as content delivery networks, this assumption is unrealistic. The "delayed-hits" model for caching, introduced by Atre, Sherry, Wang, and Berger, accounts for the latency between a missed cache request and the corresponding arrival from the backing store. This theoretical model has two parameters: the "delay" $Z$, representing the ratio between the retrieval delay and the inter-request delay in an application, and the "cache size" $k$, as in classical caching. Classical caching corresponds to $Z=1$, whereas larger values of $Z$ model applications where retrieving missed requests is expensive. Despite the practical relevance of the delayed-hits model, its theoretical underpinnings are still poorly understood. We present the first tight theoretical guarantee for optimizing delayed-hits caching: The "Least Recently Used" algorithm, a natural, deterministic, online algorithm widely used in practice, is $O(Zk)$-competitive, meaning it incurs at most $O(Zk)$ times more latency than the (offline) optimal schedule. Our result extends to any so-called "marking" algorithm.
title Latency Guarantees for Caching with Delayed Hits
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.16535