Asymptotic optimality of dynamic first-fit packing on the half-axis

Abstract

We revisit a classical problem in dynamic storage allocation. Items arrive in a linear storage medium, modeled as a half-axis, at a Poisson rate $r$ and depart after an independent exponentially distributed unit mean service time. The arriving item sizes (lengths) are assumed to be independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) from a common distribution $H$. A widely employed algorithm for allocating the items is the "first-fit" discipline, namely, each arriving item is placed in the left-most vacant interval large enough to accommodate it. In a seminal 1985 paper, Coffman, Kadota, and Shepp ([6]) proved that in the special case of unit length items (i.e. degenerate $H$), as $r$ tends towards infinity, the first-fit algorithm is asymptotically optimal in the following sense: the steady-state ratio of expected "empty space" (gaps between items) to expected occupied space tends towards $0$. In a sequel to [6], Coffman, Kadota, and Shepp ([5]) conjectured that the first-fit discipline is also asymptotically optimal for non-degenerate $H$. In this paper we provide the first proof of first-fit asymptotic optimality for non-degenerate distributions $H$ of item sizes. Our main result is for the case when $H$ is concentrated on countably many positive real sizes forming an increasing sequence that is either finite or goes to infinity, with the average item size being finite. We prove that under the first-fit discipline, as $r$ tends towards infinity, the steady-state packing configuration (scaled down by $r$) converges in distribution to the limiting packing configuration with smaller items on the left, larger items on the right, and with no gaps between. In particular, this proves asymptotic optimality of first-fit in the sense that in steady-state the empty space (scaled down by $r$) vanishes.