Cooperative scheduling mechanism for large-scale peer-to-peer computing systems

Over recent years, peer-to-peer (P2P) systems have become an important part of Internet. Millions of users have been attracted to their structures and services. P2P computing is a distributed computing paradigm that uses Internet to connect thousands, or even millions, of users into a single large virtual computer based on the sharing of computational resources. One of the most critical aspects to the design of P2P computing systems is the development of scheduling techniques to manage the computational resources efficiently and in a scalable way. This paper proposes a cooperative scheduling mechanism with a two-level topology designed to work on large-scale distributed computing P2P systems. Our main contribution is proposing three criteria that only use local information to schedule tasks thus providing scalability to the overall scheduling system. By setting up these three criteria, the system can be easily adapted to work efficiently with very different kinds of distributed applications. The extensive experimentation carried out justifies the importance of good scheduling in such heterogeneous systems, but also emphasizes the importance of having a scheduling algorithm capable of being adapted to the requirements of different kinds of application.     

Dynamic scheduling model of computing resource based on MAS cooperation mechanism

Allocation of grid resources aims at improving resource utility and grid application performance. Currently, the algorithms proposed for this purpose do not fit well the autonomic, dynamic, distributive and heterogeneous features of the grid environment. According to MAS (multi-agent system) cooperation mechanism and market bidding game rules, a model of allocating allocation of grid resources based on market economy is introduced to reveal the relationship between supply and demand. This model can make good use of the studying and negotiating ability of consumers’ agent and takes full consideration of the consumer’s behavior, thus rendering the application and allocation of resource of the consumers rational and valid. In the meantime, the utility function of consumer is given; the existence and the uniqueness of Nash equilibrium point in the resource allocation game and the Nash equilibrium solution are discussed. A dynamic game algorithm of allocating grid resources is designed. Experimental results demonstrate that this algorithm diminishes effectively the unnecessary latency, improves significantly the smoothness of response time, the ratio of throughput and resource utility, thus rendering the supply and demand of the whole grid resource reasonable and the overall grid load balanceable. Supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (Grant No. 06JJ2033), and the Society Science Foundation of Hunan Province (Grant No. 07YBB239)     

网格计算中基于信任机制的层次任务调度模型

提出了一种分布式层次任务调度模型,该模型将任务调度分两层进行,并且将信任机制引入其中以提高网格的服务质量及运行效率。提出了适应该模型的调度算法,算法同时考虑了网格实体间的信任关系、预测执行时间、QoS需求和价格因素,并动态调整它们在交易中所占的比重,从而较好地适应不同用户的需求。分析和仿真表明,该调度模型增强了网格环境的安全性和适用性,提高了执行效率,并降低了交易失败率。     

On scheduling dag s for volatile computing platforms: Area-maximizing schedules

Many modern computing platforms—notably clouds and desktop grids—exhibit dynamic heterogeneity: the availability and computing power of their constituent resources can change unexpectedly and dynamically, even in the midst of a computation. We introduce a new quality metric, area, for schedules that execute computations having interdependent constituent chores (jobs, tasks, etc.) on such platforms. Area measures the average number of tasks that a schedule renders eligible for execution at each step of a computation. Even though the definition of area does not mention and properties of host platforms (such as volatility), intuition suggests that rendering tasks eligible at a faster rate will have a benign impact on the performance of volatile platforms—and we report on simulation experiments that support this intuition. We derive the basic properties of the area metric and show how to efficiently craft area-maximizing (A-M) schedules for several classes of significant computations. Simulations that compare A-M scheduling against heuristics ranging from lightweight ones (e.g., FIFO) to computationally intensive ones suggest that A-M schedules complete computations on volatile heterogeneous platforms faster than their competition, by percentages that vary with computation structure and platform behavior—but are often in the double digits.     

Workload assignment for global real-time scheduling on unrelated clustered platforms

Real-Time Systems - Heterogeneous MPSoCs are being used more and more, from cellphones to critical embedded systems. Most of those systems offer heterogeneous sets of identical cores. In this...     

Iterative list scheduling for heterogeneous computing

Optimal scheduling of parallel applications on distributed computing systems represented by directed acyclic graph (DAG) is NP-complete in the general case. List scheduling is a very popular heuristic method for DAG-based scheduling. However, it is more suited to homogenous distributed computing systems. This paper presents an iterative list scheduling algorithm to deal with scheduling on heterogeneous computing systems. The main idea in this iterative scheduling algorithm is to improve the quality of the schedule in an iterative manner using results from previous iterations. The algorithm first uses the heterogeneous earliest-finish-time (HEFT) algorithm to find an initial schedule and iteratively improves it. Hence the algorithm can potentially produce shorter schedule length. The simulation results show that in the majority of the cases, there is significant improvement to the initial schedule. The algorithm is also found to perform best when the tasks to processors ratio is large.     

Robust task scheduling for volunteer computing systems

Performance perturbations are a natural phenomenon in volunteer computing systems. Scheduling parallel applications with precedence-constraints is emerging as a new challenge in these systems. In this paper, we propose two novel robust task scheduling heuristics, which identify best task-resource matches in terms of makespan and robustness. Our approach for both heuristics is based on a proactive reallocation (or schedule expansion) scheme enabling output schedules to tolerate a certain degree of performance degradation. Schedules are initially generated by focusing on their makespan. These schedules are scrutinized for possible rescheduling using additional volunteer computing resources to increase their robustness. Specifically, their robustness is improved by maximizing either the total allowable delay time or the minimum relative allowable delay time over all allocated volunteer resources. Allowable delay times may occur due to precedence constraints. In this paper, two proposed heuristics are evaluated with an extensive set of simulations. Based on simulation results, our approach significantly contributes to improving the robustness of the resulting schedules.     

Granularity-based workflow scheduling algorithm for cloud computing

The workflow scheduling problem has drawn a lot of attention in the research community. This paper presents a workflow scheduling algorithm, called granularity score scheduling (GSS), which is based on the granularity of the tasks in a given workflow. The main objectives of GSS are to minimize the makespan and maximize the average virtual machine utilization. The algorithm consists of three phases, namely B-level calculation, score adjustment and task ranking and scheduling. We simulate the proposed algorithm using various benchmark scientific workflow applications, i.e., Cybershake, Epigenomic, Inspiral and Montage. The simulation results are compared with two well-known existing workflow scheduling algorithms, namely heterogeneous earliest finish time and performance effective task scheduling, which are also applied in cloud computing environment. Based on the simulation results, the proposed algorithm remarkably demonstrates its performance in terms of makespan and average virtual machine utilization.     

Dynamic scheduling techniques for heterogeneous computing systems

There has been a recent increase of interest in heterogeneous computing systems, due partly to the fact that a single parallel architecture may not be adequate for exploiting all of a program's available parallelism. In some cases, heterogeneous systems have been shown to produce higher performance for lower cost than a single large machine. However, there has been only limited work on developing techniques and frameworks for partitioning and scheduling applications across the components of a heterogeneous system. In this paper we propose a general model for describing and evaluating heterogeneous systems that considers the degree of uniformity in the processing elements and the communication channels as a measure of the heterogeneity in the system. We also propose a class of dynamic scheduling algorithms for a heterogeneous computing system interconnected with an arbitrary communication network. These algorithms execute a novel optimization technique to dynamically compute schedules based on the potentially non-uniform computation and communication costs on the processors of a heterogeneous system. A unique aspect of these algorithms is that they easily adapt to different task granularities, to dynamically varying processor and system loads, and to systems with varying degrees of heterogeneity. Our simulations are designed to facilitate the evaluation of different scheduling algorithms under varying degrees of heterogeneity. The results show improved performance for our algorithms compared to the performance resulting from existing scheduling techniques.     

自愿计算环境下基于代理的自适应并行调度

描述了一个自愿计算环境下的基于代理的自适应并行调度模型,该调度代理处于服务器端与工作机端之间,可以缓解服务器端的访问竞争.在该调度模型中,服务器端直接把工作单元分配给调度代理,工作机从调度代理处获取工作单元;调度代理具有自适应并行性,高效率性,容错等特性.最后通过测试与性能分析验证了该调度模型的正确性与高效性.     

Adaptive group scheduling mechanism using mobile agents in peer-to-peer grid computing environment

Peer-to-peer grid computing is an attractive computing paradigm for high throughput applications. However, both volatility due to the autonomy of volunteers (i.e., resource providers) and the heterogeneous properties of volunteers are challenging problems in the scheduling procedure. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a scheduling mechanism that adapts to a dynamic peer-to-peer grid computing environment. In this paper, we propose a Mobile Agent based Adaptive Group Scheduling Mechanism (MAAGSM). The MAAGSM classifies and constructs volunteer groups to perform a scheduling mechanism according to the properties of volunteers such as volunteer autonomy failures, volunteer availability, and volunteering service time. In addition, the MAAGSM exploits a mobile agent technology to adaptively conduct various scheduling, fault tolerance, and replication algorithms suitable for each volunteer group. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the MAAGSM improves performance by evaluating the scheduling mechanism in Korea@Home. SungJin Choi is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Korea University. His research interests include mobile agent, peer-to-peer computing, grid computing, and distributed systems. Mr. Choi received a M.S. in computer science from Korea University. He is a student member of the IEEE. MaengSoon Baik is a senior research member at the SAMSUNG SDS Research & Develop Center. His research interests include mobile agent, grid computing, server virtualization, storage virtualization, and utility computing. Dr. Baik received a Ph.D. in computer science from Korea University. JoonMin Gil is a professor in the Department of Computer Science Education at Catholic University of Daegu, Korea. His recent research interests include grid computing, distributed and parallel computing, Internet computing, P2P networks, and wireless networks. Dr. Gil received his Ph.D. in computer science from Korea University. He is a member of the IEEE and the IEICE. SoonYoung Jung is a professor in the Department of Computer Science Education at Korea University. His research interests include grid computing, web-based education systems, database systems, knowledge management systems, and mobile computing. Dr. Jung received his Ph.D. in computer science from Korea University. ChongSun Hwang is a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Korea University. His research interests include distributed systems, distributed algorithms, and mobile computing. Dr. Hwang received a Ph.D. in statistics and computer science from the University of Georgia.     

基于改进粒子群算法的云计算任务调度算法

如何对任务进行高效合理的调度是云计算需要解决的关键问题之一,针对云计算的编程模型框架,在传统粒子群优化算法（PSO）的基础上,提出了一种具有双适应度的粒子群算法（DFPSO）。通过该算法不但能找到任务总完成时间较短的调度结果,而且此调度结果的任务平均完成时间也较短。仿真分析结果表明,在相同的条件设置下,该算法优于传统的粒子群优化算法,当任务数量增多时,其综合调度性能优点明显。     

Industrial economics and strategy: computing platforms

To the uninitiated, and even the old hand, the computer industry is an intimidating agglomeration of firms, markets, and buyers, all changing quickly in response to the latest innovation or recently invented applications. Technological opportunities arise rapidly, altering the technical landscape more quickly than in any other industry. Established firms feel perpetually under siege, particularly when they compare their lot in life to that of other firms in other industries. The computer industry's structure seems caught between forces of inertia and change, with the latter having an upper hand. Change occurs in two broad places: technical frontiers and market relationships. As is often remarked, the menu changes quickly and often, but market relationships change less often. Why, in the face of a rapidly changing menu of choices, do buyers continue to make many of the same choices year after year! Why do the same firms and products seem to reappear in computing in spite of technical change! When changes to market relationships occur, what does it tell us about forces for stasis or change? One cannot hope to develop a comprehensive understanding of the long-run forces for either change or stasis in one article. Nevertheless, to help in that endeavor, I outline a few key concepts. Instead of examining what firms should do, I explain why things happen, the former being much more strategy-oriented. This will be accomplished by showing both historical and contemporary events     

Multi-objective evolutionary algorithms for energy-aware scheduling on distributed computing systems

The ongoing increase of energy consumption by IT infrastructures forces data center managers to find innovative ways to improve energy efficiency. The latter is also a focal point for different branches of computer science due to its financial, ecological, political, and technical consequences. One of the answers is given by scheduling combined with dynamic voltage scaling technique to optimize the energy consumption. The way of reasoning is based on the link between current semiconductor technologies and energy state management of processors, where sacrificing the performance can save energy.This paper is devoted to investigate and solve the multi-objective precedence constrained application scheduling problem on a distributed computing system, and it has two main aims: the creation of general algorithms to solve the problem and the examination of the problem by means of the thorough analysis of the results returned by the algorithms.The first aim was achieved in two steps: adaptation of state-of-the-art multi-objective evolutionary algorithms by designing new operators and their validation in terms of performance and energy. The second aim was accomplished by performing an extensive number of algorithms executions on a large and diverse benchmark and the further analysis of performance among the proposed algorithms. Finally, the study proves the validity of the proposed method, points out the best-compared multi-objective algorithm schema, and the most important factors for the algorithms performance.     

A randomised algorithm for computing static-output-feedbacks for large-scale systems

ABSTRACT

A randomised algorithm is proposed for computing globally optimal static-output-feedbacks for large-scale systems. The algorithm is based on the Ray-Shooting Method and involves some heuristics to accelerate the search. We also improve the basic Ray-Shooting Algorithm and make the search in the controller parameter-space (which generally, is much more smaller than the certificate parameter-space), thus enabling its efficient use for large-scale systems.     

Enhancing list scheduling heuristics for dependent job scheduling in grid computing environments

Job scheduling plays a critical role in resource utilisation in a grid computing environment. The heterogeneity of grid resources adds some challenges to the work of job scheduling especially when jobs have dependencies which can be represented as Direct Acyclic Graphs (DAGs). Heuristics have been developed for job scheduling optimisation. This paper presents six heuristic enhancements—MMSTFT for minimising both makespan and task finish time, levelU for upward DAG levelling, TMWD for matching tasks with data, Slack for prioritising task scheduling based on slack time, LSlack for levelling the Slack heuristic, and NLPETS for non-levelling of performance effective task scheduling (PETS). The performance of LSlack is amongst the best heuristics evaluated (with BL and LMT). Additionally, heuristic enhancements MMSTS and TMWD can significantly improve the makespan of generated schedules. To facilitate performance evaluation, a DAG simulator is implemented which provides a set of tools for DAG job configuration, execution and monitoring. The components of the DAG simulator are also presented in this paper.     

List scheduling with duplication for heterogeneous computing systems

Effective task scheduling is essential for obtaining high performance in heterogeneous computing systems (HCS). However, finding an effective task schedule in HCS, requires the consideration of the heterogeneity of computation and communication. To solve this problem, we present a list scheduling algorithm, called Heterogeneous Earliest Finish with Duplicator (HEFD). As task priority is a key attribute for list scheduling algorithm, this paper presents a new approach for computing their priority which considers the performance difference in target HCS using variance. Another novel idea proposed in this paper is to try to duplicate all parent tasks and get an optimal scheduling solution. The comparison study, based on both randomly generated graphs and the graphs of some real applications, shows that our scheduling algorithm HEFD significantly surpasses other three well-known algorithms.     

Reliability-aware scheduling strategy for heterogeneous distributed computing systems

Heterogeneous computing systems are promising computing platforms, since single parallel architecture based systems may not be sufficient to exploit the available parallelism with the running applications. In some cases, heterogeneous distributed computing (HDC) systems can achieve higher performance with lower cost than single-machine supersystems. However, in HDC systems, processors and networks are not failure free and any kind of failure may be critical to the running applications. One way of dealing with such failures is to employ a reliable scheduling algorithm. Unfortunately, most existing scheduling algorithms for precedence constrained tasks in HDC systems do not adequately consider reliability requirements of inter-dependent tasks. In this paper, we design a reliability-driven scheduling architecture that can effectively measure system reliability, based on an optimal reliability communication path search algorithm, and then we introduce reliability priority rank (RRank) to estimate the task’s priority by considering reliability overheads. Furthermore, based on directed acyclic graph (DAG) we propose a reliability-aware scheduling algorithm for precedence constrained tasks, which can achieve high quality of reliability for applications. The comparison studies, based on both randomly generated graphs and the graphs of some real applications, show that our scheduling algorithm outperforms the existing scheduling algorithms in terms of makespan, scheduling length ratio, and reliability. At the same time, the improvement gained by our algorithm increases as the data communication among tasks increases.