Arbitration Policy Research Articles

The effect of arbitration program characteristics on applicants' intentions toward potential employers.

The authors examined intentions toward prospective employers with different alternative dispute resolution (ADR) policies and no ADR policy. In Study 1, students (N = 124) were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 conditions in which 2 variables, arbitration policy presence or absence and firm desirability, were manipulated. The presence of a voluntary, nonbinding arbitration policy had no impact on intentions and did not interact with firm desirability. In Study 2, students (N = 273) were randomly assigned to 1 of 8 conditions (mandatory vs. voluntary arbitration, binding vs. nonbinding arbitration, and highly desirable vs. less desirable employer). Both mandatory and binding arbitration policies were related to less favorable intentions toward firms. Predictions regarding the interaction of ADR policy and firm desirability were partially supported. Some support was found for the interaction between ADR policy and ethnicity.

Optimizing router arbitration in point-to-point networks

In this article we introduce and evaluate a method for optimizing the router arbitration policy in point-to-point networks. These networks use multiple high-speed, low-cost routers to rapidly switch data directly between data sources and destinations. We assume that routers use an arbitration algorithm that has the ability to assign different priorities to different links thus controlling the distribution of available bandwidth among channels. We propose an analytical method that allows us to determine the correct priorities for channels so as to achieve fair arbitration thus minimizing latency, increasing throughput and eliminating tree saturation. In our study we used data generated by a simulation tool to validate the proposed analytical model for determining the weights (priorities) of router ports and to evaluate the resulting performance improvements. Link usage statistics were recorded by the simulator for the purpose of performing a detailed investigation on congestion effects particularly tree saturation. The method was applied to the ServerNet™ System Area Network (SAN), developed by Tandem Computers Inc.

Automatic synthesis of easily scalable bus arbiters with dynamic priority assignment strategies

With the advent of sophisticated multi-processor computing systems, the design of bus arbitration circuits has become a critical issue; in fact, the performance of the system do not only depend on how efficiently accesses to the bus are regulated by the bus contention resolution mechanism, but also on the way the arbitration logic is realized on silicon. In this work, we present experimental data on the automatic implementation of an easily scalable arbitration circuit realizing different dynamic priority assignment schemes. The focus of the paper is on the way the arbitration mechanisms are implemented on silicon as a digital circuit, rather than on how the selected arbitration policies affect the performace of a multi-processor system. The experimental data thus refer to the quality of the VLSI designs, in terms of area, speed, and power consumption, while they do not include a comparison to other arbitration strategies, being such a comparison out of the scope of this paper.

Multiprocessor shared memory access and rewards

Computer architecture and software have evolved largely independently of mathematical models for computers as physical systems. Most bus arbitration policies are independent of the algorithm being executed on the multiprocessing architecture. While this may be adequate for platforms for which utilization is much smaller than capacity, high-performance applications require maximum utilization of resources. Communications technologies such as Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) have demonstrated the usefulness of arbitration schemes that are application dependent. This paper introduces the application of a Markov analysis based upon rewards to bus arbitration in shared memory architectures. A two-processor example is developed which relates system gain to algorithm. Generalization is provided so the formulation my be extended to N processors.

The effect of the router arbitration policy on the scalability of ServerNet™ topologies

Multistage networks are finding increasing use in building clusters of workstations and PCs. The networks that support such connectivity must provide high bandwidth, low latency, scalability, low cost, high level of usability, and reliability [1]. A key parameter that influences the network performance characteristics such as maximum latency, throughput, scalability and tree saturation, is the arbitration policy implemented in routers.

Mandatory Arbitration of Employment Disputes

While there's no definitive answer as to whether mandatory-arbitration policies for employment disputes are universally enforceable, many courts have allowed such provisions to stand. To ensure enforceability, however, such a policy should meet certain standards of fairness. Specifically, an arbitration policy should provide that (1) the procedure for selecting arbitrators is fair and impartial; (2) evidence and documentation of the facts of the matter are permissible and sufficient; (3) the damages available to the complainant are in keeping with allowable statutory awards; (4) the outcome will be provided in writing; (5) the agreement is fully disclosed to employees such that it can be entered into knowingly and voluntarily by the employees; and (6) there is no confusion regarding what employment issues must be resolved through arbitration. Mandatory arbitration cannot, however, preclude employees from filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Some courts have also created confusion regarding whether unionized employees with a collective-bargaining agreement should be treated differently from non-union workers with respect to mandatory-arbitration policies. In general, unionized employees may bring suit in federal court despite the existence of a mandatory-arbitration policy whereas non-union workers may not, provided the mandatory-arbitration agreement is deemed to be enforceable.

Compulsory arbitration of non-union employment disputes

In response to costly legal battles and proliferating causes of action for alleged employer misconduct, employers in the United States are beginning to require their employees to sign contracts that mandate binding arbitration of any employment dispute. These arbitration contracts have been the focus of much litigation because they compel employees to waive their right to sue their employers for employment discrimination, tortious conduct, and any other dispute that arises out of the employment relation. In Gilmer v. Interstate / Johnson Lane Corp. (1991), the U.S. Supreme Court cracked opened the door to the legitimacy of these contracts by sanctioning compulsory arbitration of an age discrimination claim. In the ensuing years, lower courts nationwide, except in the Sixth Circuit (Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee), have interpreted Gilmer to mean that employees can be required to arbitrate almost any employee rights question, provided that certain procedural guidelines are followed. This article presents an overview of the law and the literature in this area to assist human resource managers in designing a compulsory arbitration policy that will both survive legal scrutiny and operate to the mutual advantage of both employer and employee.

A self-selection distributed arbiter for a multiprocessor

Some years ago Gespac included the well known self-selection arbitration technique in their new G-96 backplane bus standard. Along with other enhancements introduced later (such as the message passing specification) this adoption made possible the implementation of small and inexpensive bus-based multiprocessors. In this paper we describe an integrated circuit implementation of the self-selection arbiter (SSA) which is now being used in our G-96 bus-based multiprocessor system. The arbiter is based on a single semi-custom 1.5 μm CMOS ASIC which implements a complete SSA unit for one processor. Each SSA unit is composed of two main functional blocks: the self-selection network, which performs arbitration at the most basic level, and the self-selection arbiter control unit, which deals with the specific details of the bus protocol, arbitration policies and, in general, all control and synchronization required to carry out the bus allocation process. Although our implementation concerns the G-96 bus, its basic principles are quite general, so most of its features can easily be ported to other buses.

A comprehensive performance evaluation of crossbar networks

A comprehensive model for evaluating crossbar networks in which the memory bandwidth and processor acceptance probability are primary measures considered is presented. This analytical model includes all important network control policies, such as the bus arbitration and rejected request handling policies, as well as the home memory concept. Computer simulation validates the correctness of the model. It is confirmed that the home memory and dynamic bus arbitration policy improve the network performance. >

Symmetric crossbar arbiters for VLSI communication switches

The design and implementation of symmetric crossbar arbiters are addressed. Several arbiter designs are compared based on simulations of a multistage interconnection network. These simulations demonstrate the influence of the switch arbitration policy on network throughput, average latency, and worst-case latency. It is shown that some natural designs result in poor system performance and/or slow implementations. Two efficient arbiter implementations are proposed. Based on network simulations, VLSI implementation, and circuit simulation, it is shown that these arbiters achieve nearly optimal system performance without becoming the critical path that limits the system clock. >

Head of the line arbitration of packet switches with combined input and output queueing

AbstractA single‐stage non‐blocking N × N packet switch is considered. Data units may be stored before switching at the inputs as well as after switching at the outputs. Some output buffering capacity is intended to achieve high throughput, whereas an additional input buffering capacity keeps losses due to input‐buffer overflow reasonably low. The paper studies the impact on performance of the head of the line arbitration policy, i.e. the sequence which is used to transfer data units from the heads of input queues to each output queue. The investigation is based on two performance measures: the average delay and the maximum throughput of the switch. Closed‐form expressions for the FCFS, LCFS and the ROS policies are obtained. The result of the average delay with the FCFS policy leads to a lower bound, and that with the LCFS policy to an upper bound for the average delay, corresponding to an arbitrary symmetric policy which does not use information related to the state of the input queues. It is shown that the maximum throughput does not depend on the head of the line arbitration policy. It depends only on the output‐buffer size and the packet‐size distribution. The cases of fixed and exponentially distributed packet sizes are studied. The effects of asymmetric policies which result in different behaviours of some of the input queues is also considered.

Wavelength division multiple access on a high-speed optical fibre LAN

Abstract A multichannel medium access control protocol suitable for implementation on a wavelength division multiplexed optical fibre LAN is discussed. Particular emphasis is placed on the mean delay against network throughput performance at individual channel transmission rates of 100 Mbit/s. The protocol is based on a token passing arbitration policy which dynamically allocates both the token and the data to individual wavelength multiplexed channels. An improved performance is demonstrated in comparison with alternative conventional approaches operating at an equivalent overall network transmission rate.

Methods of addressing the interactions of intelligent network services with embedded switch services

A key factor in the transition of the existing network to an intelligent network (IN) environment is the need to partition the network intelligence and to ensure the coexistence of the embedded switch services with the externally controlled services. If the network intelligence can be defined by entities (e.g. access control and routing, connection control, basic call control, feature control, etc.), then the issue is how to manage their distribution over the evolving network elements (NEs). The authors focus on the early phases of the IN, during a 1991-2 time frame, when these features must interwork with the existing features (e.g. those within the Centrex service). They provide an overview of the features interactions and arbitration policies prevailing in today's network. They then describe the framework for both single- and multinode networked features models. The issues of call control distributed over the NEs of the IN are treated as extensions to the concepts and interfaces needed to provide networked services like areawide Centrex and private virtual networks. A model for offering IN/1+ services is described.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Performance investigation of a token passing access protocol for a multichannel optical fibre LAN

An alternative approach to multichannel local area network access is described. The new multichannel access scheme or protocol is based on a token passing arbitration policy. It is specifically intended for use with a starconfigured optical fibre LAN employing wavelength division multiplexing technology in order to provide a multichannel transmission medium. The multichannel network architecture comprises a single reservation channel and several equivalent speed data channels. Delay versus throughput performance characteristics for the network obtained by both analysis and discrete event simulation are shown. The multichannel token passing protocol is found to significantly improve these characteristics in comparison with a conventional single channel token passing approach using the same overall network transmission rate (i.e. the sum of the individual channel bit rates in the multichannel case). Furthermore, when the end-to-end propagation delay for an individual channel on the network becomes large, the multichannel token passing protocol is shown to exhibit an improved delay versus throughput performance over a multichannel protocol employing carrier sense multiple access with collision detection.

Analysis of interconnection networks with different arbiter designs

In performance evaluation of interconnection networks, it is usually assumed that in the event of conflicts a request is accepted with equal probability. This paper illustrates that this arbitration policy discriminates against remote or less frequent requests because it rejects them most of the time. A favorite memory environment is considered as an example and the network performance under various arbitration policies is examined. Policies of equal acceptance and priority to favorite and nonfavorite requests are examined by defining three probabilities of acceptance. The networks considered are crossbar, multiple-bus, and multistage interconnection networks. For these networks arbiter designs that incorporate the priorities are presented.

How Do Arbitrators Make Decisions in Interest Arbitration?

This study uses a simulation methodology to systematically analyze the criteria arbitrators use under conventional arbitration. Specifically, 69 experienced arbitrators determined a wage settlement for 25 simulated disputes. Each dispute was described by the same seven criteria. The weightings of the criteria were determined for each arbitrator by regressing wage settlement on the seven criteria. Results indicated that arbitrators are very consistent in their judgments. However, they do not subjectively know the factors that affect their judgment. In addition, the results showed, surprisingly, that the most common arbitration policy was to maintain the status quo by simply adjusting the present wage by the average arbitrated increase in the industry.

A variable priority arbiter for resource allocation in asynchronous multiprocessor systems

A systematic approach to the resource allocation arbiter design is proposed. The time-local performance optimisation induces the deployment of various arbitration policies within a system. In this respect the arbiter types are considered. The flexible policy arbiter is further proposed, followed by a brief overview of a multimicroprocessor implementation.

Problems Raised by the General Treaty of Inter-American Arbitration

We are witnessing today a remarkable evolution toward organized international justice. Such an evolution is inevitable in any permanent society of states, just as much as the growth of law and the establishment of organs of justice are inevitable in any lasting society of individuals. Our immediate and pressing interest in relation to this great development of international justice is this: What should be the r61e of our country? Shall the United States, faithful to the liberal arbitration policy which characterized her earlier history, adopt obligatory arbitration for the peaceful settlement of international disputes? This question may soon be determined when the Senate comes to consider the new Pan American Arbitration Treaty.

The Arbitration Policy of the United States as Viewed by Others

The Arbitration Policy of the United States as Viewed by Others