Requirement-aware strategies for scheduling real-time divisible loads on clusters

This paper investigates the real-time scheduling problem for handling heterogeneous divisible loads on cluster systems. Divisible load applications occur in many fields of science and engineering. Such applications can be easily parallelized in a master–worker fashion, but pose several scheduling challenges. We consider divisible loads associated with deadlines to enhance quality-of-service (QoS) and provide performance guarantees in distributed computing environments. In addition, since the divisible loads to be performed may widely vary in terms of their required hardware and software, we capture the loads’ various processing requirements in our load distribution strategies, a unique feature that is applicable for running proprietary applications only on certain eligible processing nodes. Thus in our problem formulation each load can only be processed by certain processors as both the loads and processors are heterogeneous. We propose scheduling algorithms referred to as Requirements-Aware Real-Time Scheduling (RARTS) algorithms, which consist of a novel scheduling policy, referred to as Minimum Slack Capacity First (MSCF), and two multi-round load distribution strategies, referred to as All Eligible Processors (AEP) and Least Capability First (LCF). We perform rigorous performance evaluation studies to quantify the performance of our strategies on a variety of scenarios.     

Comments on “Design and performance evaluation of load distribution strategies for multiple loads on heterogeneous linear daisy chain networks”

Min, Veeravalli, and Barlas have proposed strategies to minimize the overall execution time of one or several divisible loads on a heterogeneous linear network, using one or more installments [Han Min Wong, Bharadwaj Veeravalli, Scheduling divisible loads on heterogeneous linear daisy chain networks with arbitrary processor release times, IEEE Trans. Parallel Distrib. Syst. 15 (3) (2004) 273–288; Han Min Wong, Bharadwaj Veeravalli, Gerassimos Barlas, Design and performance evaluation of load distribution strategies for multiple divisible loads on heterogeneous linear daisy chain networks, J. Parallel Distrib. Comput. 65 (12) (2005) 1558–1577]. We show using a very simple example that their approach does not always produce a solution and that, when it does, the solution is often suboptimal. We also show how to find an optimal scheduling for any instance, once the number of installments per load is given. Finally, we formally prove that under a linear cost model, as in both the above-mentioned references, an optimal schedule has an infinite number of installments. Therefore such a cost model should not be used to design practical multi-installment algorithms.     

Resource-Aware Distributed Scheduling Strategies for Large-Scale Computational Cluster/Grid Systems

In this paper, we propose distributed algorithms referred to as resource-aware dynamic incremental scheduling (RADIS) strategies. Our strategies are specifically designed to handle large volumes of computationally intensive arbitrarily divisible loads submitted for processing at cluster/grid systems involving multiple sources and sinks (processing nodes). We consider a real-life scenario, wherein the buffer space (memory) available at the sinks (required for holding and processing the loads) varies over time, and the loads have deadlines and propose efficient "pull-based" scheduling strategies with an admission control policy that ensures that the admitted loads are processed, satisfying their deadline requirements. The design of our proposed strategies adopts the divisible load paradigm, referred to as the divisible load theory (DLT), which is shown to be efficient in handling large volume loads. We demonstrate detailed workings of the proposed algorithms via a simulation study by using real-life parameters obtained from a major physics experiment.     

Out-of-core divisible load processing

In this paper, we analyze processing divisible loads in systems with a memory hierarchy. Divisible loads are computations that can be divided into parts of arbitrary sizes and these parts can be independently processed in a distributed system. The problem is to partition the load so that the total processing time, including communications and computations, is the shortest possible. Earlier works in the divisible load theory assumed distributed systems with a flat memory model. The dependence of the processing time on the size of the assigned load was assumed to be linear. A new mathematical model relaxing the above two assumptions is proposed in this article. We study distributed systems-which have both the hierarchical memory model and a piecewise linear dependence of the processing time on the size of the assigned load. Performance of such systems is modeled and evaluated. Finally, we compare the efficiency of distributed processing divisible loads in multiinstallment and out-of-core modes. Multiinstallment processing consists in sending multiple small chunks of the load to processors instead of a single chunk which needs external memory. It turns out that multiinstallment is an advantageous strategy for reasonably selected load chunks sizes.     

Efficient real-time divisible load scheduling

Providing QoS and performance guarantees to arbitrarily divisible loads has become a significant problem for many cluster-based research computing facilities. While progress is being made in scheduling arbitrarily divisible loads, current approaches are not efficient and do not scale well. In this paper, we propose a linear algorithm for real-time divisible load scheduling. Unlike existing approaches, the new algorithm relaxes the tight coupling between the task admission controller and the task dispatcher. By eliminating the need to generate exact schedules in the admission controller, the algorithm avoids high overheads. We also proposed a hybrid algorithm that combines the best of our efficient algorithm and a previously best-known approach. We experimentally evaluate the new algorithm. Simulation results demonstrate that the algorithm scales well, can schedule large numbers of tasks efficiently, and performs similarly to existing approaches in terms of providing real-time guarantees.     

An incentive-based distributed mechanism for scheduling divisible loads in tree networks

The underlying assumption of Divisible Load Scheduling (DLS) theory is that the processors composing the network are obedient, i.e., they do not “cheat” the scheduling algorithm. This assumption is unrealistic if the processors are owned by autonomous, self-interested organizations that have no a priori motivation for cooperation and they will manipulate the algorithm if it is beneficial to do so. In this paper, we address this issue by designing a distributed mechanism for scheduling divisible loads in tree networks, called DLS-T, which provides incentives to processors for reporting their true processing capacity and executing their assigned load at full processing capacity. We prove that the DLS-T mechanism computes the optimal allocation in an ex post Nash equilibrium. Finally, we simulate and study the mechanism under various network structures and processor parameters.     

Scheduling real-time divisible loads with advance reservations

Providing QoS and performance guarantee to arbitrarily divisible loads has become a significant problem for many cluster-based research computing facilities. While progress is being made in scheduling arbitrarily divisible loads, previous approaches have no support for advance reservations. However, with the emergence of Grid applications that require simultaneous access to multi-site resources, supporting advance reservations in a cluster has become increasingly important. In this paper we propose a new real-time divisible load scheduling algorithm that supports advance reservations in a cluster. The impact of advance reservations on system performance is systematically studied. Simulation results show that, with the proposed algorithm and appropriate advance reservations, the system performance could be maintained at the same level as the no reservation case. Thus, Our approach enforces the real-time agreement vis-a-vis addresses the under-utilization concerns.     

Multi-objective method for divisible load scheduling in multi-level tree network

There is extensive literature concerning the divisible load theory. Based on the divisible load theory (DLT) the load can be divided into some arbitrary independent parts, in which each part can be processed independently by a processor. The divisible load theory has also been examined on the processors that cheat the algorithm, i.e., the processors do not report their true computation rates. According to the literature, if the processors do not report their true computation rates, the divisible load scheduling model fails to achieve its optimal performance. This paper focuses on the divisible load scheduling, where the processors cheat the algorithm. In this paper, a multi-objective method for divisible load scheduling is proposed. The goal is to improve the performance of the divisible load scheduling when the processors cheat the algorithm. The proposed method has been examined on several function approximation problems. The experimental results indicate the proposed method has approximately 66% decrease in finish time in the best case.     

On the design of high-performance algorithms for aligning multiple protein sequences on mesh-based multiprocessor architectures

In this paper, we address the problem of multiple sequence alignment (MSA) for handling very large number of proteins sequences on mesh-based multiprocessor architectures. As the problem has been conclusively shown to be computationally complex, we employ divisible load paradigm (also, referred to as divisible load theory, DLT) to handle such large number of sequences. We design an efficient computational engine that is capable of conducting MSAs by exploiting the underlying parallelism embedded in the computational steps of multiple sequence algorithms. Specifically, we consider the standard Smith–Waterman (SW) algorithm in our implementation, however, our approach is by no means restrictive to SW class of algorithms alone. The treatment used in this paper is generic to a class of similar dynamic programming problems. Our approach is recursive in the sense that the quality of solutions can be refined continuously till an acceptable level of quality is achieved. After first phase of computation, we design a heuristic scheme that renders the final solution for MSA. We conduct rigorous simulation experiments using several hundreds of homologous protein sequences derived from the Rattus Norvegicus and Mus Musculus databases of olfactory receptors. We quantify the performance based on speed-up metric. We compare our algorithms to serial or single machine processing approaches. We testify our findings by comparing with conventional equal load partitioning (ELP) strategy that is commonly used in the parallel processing literature. Based on our extensive simulation study, we observe that DLT paradigm offers an excellent speed-up characteristics and provides avenues for its use in several other biological sequence processing related problem. This study is a first time attempt in using the DLT paradigm to devise efficient strategies to handle large scale multiple protein sequence alignment problem on mesh-based multiprocessor systems.     

A dynamic load balancing strategy with the push and pull approaches in DHT networks

The dynamic load imbalance problem, probably caused by the heavy-tailed distribution of file requests, negatively impacts on the distributed hash table (DHT) networks’ availability. The existing solutions mainly employed the local load information to design the load balancing strategies, which often need to calculate the peers’ loads and execute the balancing procedures periodically, and thus their effectiveness could not be guaranteed and network bandwidth is wasted. To address this problem, we first describe the mechanisms for managing the download volume and the upload volume of each peer, as well as the information of the heavily loaded nodes and the lightly loaded nodes classified by double thresholds, and then we present a novel load balancing strategy which transfers the loads from the heavily loaded nodes to the lightly loaded nodes with the push and pull approaches. The simulation results show that our scheme is effective and efficient in handling the load imbalance problem in DHT networks.     

A Heuristic Algorithm for Task Scheduling Based on Mean Load on Grid

Efficient task scheduling is critical to achieving high performance on grid computing environment. The task scheduling on grid is studied as optimization problem in this paper. A heuristic task scheduling algorithm satisfying resources load balancing on grid environment is presented. The algorithm schedules tasks by employing mean load based on task predictive execution time as heuristic information to obtain an initial scheduling strategy. Then an optimal scheduling strategy is achieved by selecting two machines satisfying condition to change their loads via reassigning their tasks under the heuristic of their mean load. Methods of selecting machines and tasks are given in this paper to increase the throughput of the system and reduce the total waiting time. The efficiency of the algorithm is analyzed and the performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated via extensive simulation experiments. Experimental results show that the heuristic algorithm performs significantly to ensure high load balancing and achieve an optimal scheduling strategy almost all the time. Furthermore, results show that our algorithm is high efficient in terms of time complexity.     

Honey bee behavior inspired load balancing of tasks in cloud computing environments

Scheduling of tasks in cloud computing is an NP-hard optimization problem. Load balancing of non-preemptive independent tasks on virtual machines (VMs) is an important aspect of task scheduling in clouds. Whenever certain VMs are overloaded and remaining VMs are under loaded with tasks for processing, the load has to be balanced to achieve optimal machine utilization. In this paper, we propose an algorithm named honey bee behavior inspired load balancing (HBB-LB), which aims to achieve well balanced load across virtual machines for maximizing the throughput. The proposed algorithm also balances the priorities of tasks on the machines in such a way that the amount of waiting time of the tasks in the queue is minimal. We have compared the proposed algorithm with existing load balancing and scheduling algorithms. The experimental results show that the algorithm is effective when compared with existing algorithms. Our approach illustrates that there is a significant improvement in average execution time and reduction in waiting time of tasks on queue.     

Handling large-size discrete wavelet transform on network-based computing systems — parallelization via divisible load paradigm

The discrete wavelet transform (DWT) is a powerful signal processing tool, but comes with a considerable computation cost. In this paper, we consider the problem of parallelizing the DWT computation on loosely-coupled networked systems. We first systematically analyze the data dependencies among DWT computations, identify the partitionable portions and then by applying the divisible load theory (DLT), we derive a novel scheduling strategy to schedule DWT computation onto bus networks. Our study is first of its kind in the DLT literature to demonstrate handling a highly coupled recursive computational nature of this problem towards gaining a significant speed-up.     

Large matrix–vector products on distributed bus networks with communication delays using the divisible load paradigm: performance analysis and simulation

We present a performance analysis and experimental simulation results on the problem of scheduling a divisible load on a bus network. In general, the computing requirement of a divisible load is CPU intensive and demands multiple processing nodes for efficient processing. We consider the problem of scheduling a very large matrix–vector product computation on a bus network consisting of a homogeneous set of processors. The experiment was conducted on a PC-based networking environment consisting of Pentium II machines arranged in a bus topology. We present a theoretical analysis and verify these findings on the experimental test-bed. We also developed a software support system with flexibility in terms of scalability of the network and the load size. We present a detailed discussion on the experimental results providing directions for possible future extensions of this work.     

An energy‐aware scheduling algorithm for divisible loads in a bus network

The schedule of divisible loads is one of the most typical problems in the research and application of parallel and distributed systems. For these large‐scale systems, the energy consumption problem has drawn great attention in recent years because of falling hardware costs and the growing concern of energy costs. In computing‐intensive systems, energy is primarily consumed by CPUs, and dynamic voltage‐frequency scaling technology is capable of adjusting CPUs' speed as well as saving energy. In this paper, we focus on computing‐intensive applications and study the energy‐aware scheduling problem for divisible loads in a bus network. The energy‐speed model is introduced to characterize the problem based on dynamic voltage scaling, and the energy‐aware scheduling problem is analyzed in the application layer above the operating system. The problem can be formulated mathematically as a nonlinear programming problem, and the solution is achieved using the Lagrange multiplier method under Kuhn–Tucker conditions. Based on the analytical results, an energy‐aware scheduling scheme called ENERG for divisible loads is presented. Finally, the energy‐aware scheme is compared with two other schemes to show the effectiveness and efficiency of the energy savings of our algorithm. Additionally, the experimental results illustrate the influence of network transmission delay on energy consumption. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Design and performance evaluation of load distribution strategies for multiple divisible loads on heterogeneous linear daisy chain networks

In this paper, we consider the problem of scheduling multiple divisible loads on heterogeneous linear daisy chain networks. Our objective is to design a load distribution strategy such that the total processing time of a set of loads is minimized. We assume that the set of loads are resident in one of the farthest end processors, which has a scheduler that will distribute the load to the other processors in the network. When distributing a load from the set, the distribution pattern of the previous load has to be taken into consideration to ensure that no processors are left idle and there are no collisions in the communication links. We design single and multi-installments strategies to achieve the above objective. We derive certain important conditions to determine whether an optimum solution exists. We propose two heuristic strategies when an optimum solution is unattainable. Using all the above strategies, we conduct four different simulation experiments to track the performance of strategies under several real-life situations. We conducted four different simulation experiments based on the two heuristic strategies to identify the best combination suitable for our multiple-loads distribution strategy. We also run simulations for a homogeneous system to quantify the performance under 3 different policies, that is, when the loads are (a) unsorted, (b) sorted with smallest load first (SLF) and (c) sorted with largest load first (LLF). A detailed analysis of the simulation results is presented and based on these, recommendations are made for the choice of strategies. Finally, we compare the performance of a single-load distribution strategy against the multiple-loads distribution strategy designed in this paper to quantify the exact performance gain that can be achieved. Illustrative examples are also provided for ease of understanding.     

异构总线网络中实时可分性负载调度算法*

针对异构总线网络提出了一种动态实时可分性负载调度方法.首先,根据可分性负载调度最优性原理,分析了网络中处理器负载分配的最优次序以及参与计算的处理器数目;然后,针对实时任务的截止期限约束提出一种动态负载分配算法,该算法可以利用网络中最少的处理器数目,保证实时任务在其截止期限之前计算完成.理论分析和仿真测试都验证了所提出算法的有效性.     

基于预测机制的分级负载均衡算法

为解决服务器集群负载分配不均的问题,根据用户访问的请求类型,综合考虑用户历史请求引起的负载增量和服务器节点性能,提出了基于预测机制的分级负载均衡算法。负载均衡节点根据用户访问的请求类型建立一次指数平滑预测模型,对相应请求类型引起的负载进行预测,并将预测负载划分为低负载、正常负载、重负载等三个负载等级,根据负载等级对用户请求进行调度,从而实现负载均衡。使用OPNET仿真软件进行测试,结果表明该算法能有效提高负载均衡效率,有较好的负载均衡效果。     

Bandwidth‐aware divisible task scheduling for cloud computing

Task scheduling is a fundamental issue in achieving high efficiency in cloud computing. However, it is a big challenge for efficient scheduling algorithm design and implementation (as general scheduling problem is NP‐complete). Most existing task‐scheduling methods of cloud computing only consider task resource requirements for CPU and memory, without considering bandwidth requirements. In order to obtain better performance, in this paper, we propose a bandwidth‐aware algorithm for divisible task scheduling in cloud‐computing environments. A nonlinear programming model for the divisible task‐scheduling problem under the bounded multi‐port model is presented. By solving this model, the optimized allocation scheme that determines proper number of tasks assigned to each virtual resource node is obtained. On the basis of the optimized allocation scheme, a heuristic algorithm for divisible load scheduling, called bandwidth‐aware task‐scheduling (BATS) algorithm, is proposed. The performance of algorithm is evaluated using CloudSim toolkit. Experimental result shows that, compared with the fair‐based task‐scheduling algorithm, the bandwidth‐only task‐scheduling algorithm, and the computation‐only task‐scheduling algorithm, the proposed algorithm (BATS) has better performance. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A hybrid column generation with GRASP and path relinking for the network load balancing problem

In this paper, a hybrid meta-heuristic is proposed which combines the GRASP with path relinking method and Column Generation. The key idea of this method is to run a GRASP with path relinking search on a restricted search space, defined by Column Generation, instead of running the search on the complete search space of the problem. Moreover, column generation is used not only to compute the initial restricted search space but also to modify it during the whole algorithm. The proposed heuristic is used to solve the network load balancing problem: given a capacitated telecommunications network with single path routing and an estimated traffic demand matrix, the network load balancing problem is the determination of a routing path for each traffic commodity such that the network load balancing is optimized, i.e., the worst link load is minimized, among all such solutions, the second worst link load is minimized, and continuing in this way until all link loads are minimized. The computational results presented in this paper show that, for the network load balancing problem, the proposed heuristic is effective in obtaining better quality solutions in shorter running times.