Requirement-aware strategies with arbitrary processor release times for scheduling multiple divisible loads

Abstract

This paper investigates the problem of scheduling multiple divisible loads in networked computer systems with a particular emphasis in capturing two important real-life constraints, the arbitrary processor release times (or ready times) and heterogeneous processing requirements of different loads. We study two distinct cases of interest, static case, where processors' release times are predetermined and known, and dynamic case, where release times are unknown until processors are released. To address the two cases, we propose two novel scheduling strategies, referred to as Static Scheduling Strategy (SSS) and Dynamic Scheduling Strategy (DSS), respectively. In addition, we capture a task's processing requirements in our strategies, a unique feature that is applicable for handling loads on networks that run proprietary applications only on certain nodes. Thus, each task can only be processed by some certain nodes in our formulation. To handle the contention of multiple applications that have various processing requirements but share the same processing nodes, we propose an efficient load selection policy, referred to as Most Remaining Load First (MRF). We integrate MRF into SSS and DSS to address the problem of scheduling multiple divisible loads with arbitrary processor release times and heterogeneous requirements. We evaluate the strategies using extensive simulation experiments. © 2011 IEEE.