Towards a Passivity Framework for Power Control and Response Time Management in Cloud Computing

There has been great interest in using classical control theory to manage computing systems. Classical control, however, focuses on regulating a system’s state in a neighborhood of an equilibrium point and it is unclear if such equilibrium-based methods are well-suited for systems providing performance guarantees in the face of large and rapid input fluctuations. This may be the case for cloud computing applications where consumer workloads vary in a rapid and unpredictable manner. As an alternative to classical methods, this paper discusses a passivity framework for power control and responsetime management in cloud computing applications. This paper suggests that passivity concepts provide a decentralized method for certifying whether a collection of interconnected cloud computing systems can coordinate their actions in a stable manner.