Determining the optimal block size is crucial for achieving high throughput in blockchain systems. Many studies have focused on tuning various components, such as databases, network bandwidth, and consensus mechanisms. However, the impact of block size on system performance remains a topic of debate, often resulting in divergent views and even leading to new forks in blockchain networks. This research proposes a mathematical model to maximize performance by determining the ideal block size for Hyperledger Fabric, a prominent consortium blockchain. By leveraging machine learning and solving the model with a genetic algorithm, the proposed approach assesses how factors such as block size, transaction size, and network capacity influence the block processing time. The integration of an optimization solver enables precise adjustments to block size configuration before deployment, ensuring improved performance from the outset. This systematic approach aims to balance block processing efficiency, network latency, and system throughput, offering a robust solution to improve blockchain performance across diverse business contexts.

Scientific workflows have gained popularity for large-scale data analysis due to their potential to improve the reproducibility, scalability and documentation of complex multistep scientific analysis pipelines. However, their reusability is currently limited in practice, as a workflow is typically developed for a specific infrastructure. This is reflected in the choice of tools (e.g. less/more memory requirements), their configuration (e.g. number of threads) and the workflow topology (e.g. data parallel scatter/gather). Re-running such a workflow requires access to the same, or at least a highly similar, computing environment, effectively reducing its use by other groups. To address this challenge, we present CuttleFlow, a novel method for adapting and rewriting scientific workflows given a description of an infrastructure and its inputs. CuttleFlow starts from an abstract workflow description and compiles it into an infrastructure-specific logical workflow using three types of rewriting operations, namely tool replacement, tool reconfiguration, and data scattering/gathering for task parallelization. We implement a prototype based on NextFlow and evaluate it for two important bioinformatics data analysis problems, namely RNAseq and metagenomics, on a distributed infrastructure. We demonstrate the large impact that the rewriting of CuttleFlow can have on runtime, achieving a reduction in makespan of up to 71%. We also demonstrate a significant reduction in resource usage through our rewriting approach.

Abstract Scientific communities are motivated to schedule their large-scale data analysis workflows in heterogeneous cluster environments because of privacy and financial issues. In such environments containing considerably diverse resources, efficient resource allocation approaches are essential for reaching high performance. Accordingly, this research addresses the scheduling problem of workflows with bag-of-task form to minimize total runtime (makespan). To this aim, we develop a mixed-integer linear programming model (MILP). The proposed model contains binary decision variables determining which tasks should be assigned to which nodes. Also, it contains linear constraints to fulfill the tasks requirements such as memory and scheduling policy. Comparative results show that our approach outperforms related approaches in most cases. As part of the post-optimality analysis, some secondary preferences are imposed on the proposed model to obtain the most preferred optimal solution. We analyze the relaxation of the makespan in the hope of significantly reducing the number of consumed nodes.