Partition oriented frame based fair scheduler

Proportionate fair schedulers provide an effective methodology for scheduling recurrent real-time tasks on multiprocessors. However, a drawback in these schedulers is that they ignore a task’s affinity towards the processor where it was executed last, causing frequent inter-processor task migrations which ultimately results in increased execution times. This paper presents Partition Oriented Frame Based Fair Scheduler (POFBFS), an efficient proportional fair scheduler for periodic firm and soft real-time tasks that ensures a bounded number of task migrations. Experimental results reveal that POFBFS can achieve 3 to 100 times reduction in the number of migrations suffered with respect to the General-ERfair algorithm (for a set of 25 to 100 tasks running on 2 to 8 processors) while simultaneously maintaining high fairness accuracy.     

HEARS: A heterogeneous energy-aware real-time scheduler

Developing energy-efficient schedulers for real-time heterogeneous platforms executing periodic tasks is an onerous as well as a computationally challenging problem. As a result, today we are confronting a scarcity of real-time energy-aware scheduling techniques which are applicable to heterogeneous platforms. Hence, this research proposes a heuristic strategy called, HEARS, for DVFS enabled energy-aware scheduling of a set of periodic tasks executing on a heterogeneous multicore system having an arbitrary number of core types. The presented scheme first applies deadline-partitioning to acquire a set of distinct time-intervals called frames. At any frame boundary, the following two-phase hierarchical operation is applied to obtain schedule for the next frame: First, it computes execution requirements for each task on every processing core of the platform. For any task, its execution requirement on a core within a frame depends upon the following criteria: (i) Length of the ensuing frame, (ii) Total execution requirements of the instance of the task on different cores (as a single task may have different execution requirement on different cores) and, (iii) Deadline of the instance of the task. Next, it simultaneously allocates each task on one or more cores and selects operating frequencies for the concerned cores such that the total execution demand of all the allocated tasks are satisfied as well as there is minimum change in energy consumption for the system. Experimental results show that our proposed strategy is not only able to achieve appreciable energy savings with respect to state-of-the-art MaxMin (2% to 37% on average) but also enables significant improvement in resource utilization (as high as 57%).     

Genetic algorithm based task reordering to improve the performance of batch scheduled massively parallel scientific applications

The growth in size of networked high performance computers along with novel accelerator‐based node architectures has further emphasized the importance of communication efficiency in high performance computing. The world's largest high performance computers are usually operated as shared user facilities due to the costs of acquisition and operation. Applications are scheduled for execution in a shared environment and are placed on nodes that are not necessarily contiguous on the interconnect. Furthermore, the placement of tasks on the nodes allocated by the scheduler is sub‐optimal, leading to performance loss and variability. Here, we investigate the impact of task placement on the performance of two massively parallel application codes on the Titan supercomputer, a turbulent combustion flow solver (S3D) and a molecular dynamics code (LAMMPS). Benchmark studies show a significant deviation from ideal weak scaling and variability in performance. The inter‐task communication distance was determined to be one of the significant contributors to the performance degradation and variability. A genetic algorithm‐based parallel optimization technique was used to optimize the task ordering. This technique provides an improved placement of the tasks on the nodes, taking into account the application's communication topology and the system interconnect topology. Application benchmarks after task reordering through genetic algorithm show a significant improvement in performance and reduction in variability, thereby enabling the applications to achieve better time to solution and scalability on Titan during production. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Scheduling of hard real-time multi-phase multi-thread (MPMT) periodic tasks

In this paper we study the scheduling of parallel and real-time recurrent tasks on multiprocessor platforms. Firstly, we propose a new parallel task model which allows recurrent tasks to be composed of several phases, each one composed of several threads. Each thread requires a single processor for execution and can be scheduled simultaneously. We then propose an algorithm to transpose popular Fork-Join task model to our MPMT task model. Secondly, we define several kinds of real-time schedulers that can be applied to our parallel task model. We distinguish between two scheduling classes: Hierarchical schedulers and Global Thread schedulers. We present and prove correct an exact schedulability test for each class. Lastly, we also evaluate the performance of our scheduling paradigm in comparison with Gang scheduling by means of simulations. In this work we extend the work of Lupu and Goossens in Scheduling of hard real-time multi-thread periodic tasks (Real-Time and Network Systems, 2011) which considers mono-phase multi-thread task model. We extend their previous results to a Multi-Phase Multi-Thread task model.     

Self-adjustment of resource allocation for grid applications

Grids involve coordinated resource sharing and problem solving in heterogeneous dynamic environments to meet the needs of a generation of researchers requiring large amounts of bandwidth and more powerful computational resources. The lack of resource ownership by grid schedulers and fluctuations in resource availability require mechanisms which will enable grids to adjust themselves to cope with fluctuations. The lack of a central controller implies a need for self-adaptation. Grids must thus be enabled with the ability to discover, monitor and manage the use of resources so they can operate autonomously. Two different approaches have been conceived to match the resource demands of grid applications to resource availability: Dynamic scheduling and adaptive scheduling. However, these two approaches fail to address at least one of three important issues: (i) the production of feasible schedules in a reasonable amount of time in relation to that required for the execution of an application; (ii) the impact of network link availability on the execution time of an application; and (iii) the necessity of migrating codes to decrease the execution time of an application. To overcome these challenges, this paper proposes a procedure for enabling grid applications, composed of various dependent tasks, to deal with the availability of hosts and links bandwidth. This procedure involves task scheduling, resource monitoring and task migration, with the goal of decreasing the execution time of grid applications. The procedure differs from other approaches in the literature because it constantly considers changes in resource availability, especially network bandwidth availability, to trigger task migration. The proposed procedure is illustrated via simulation using various scenarios involving fluctuation of resource availability. An additional contribution of this paper is the introduction of a set of schedulers offering solutions which differ in terms of both schedule length and computational complexity. The distinguishing aspect of this set of schedulers is the consideration of time requirements in the production of feasible schedules. Performance is then evaluated considering various network topologies and task dependencies.     

HAT: history-based auto-tuning MapReduce in heterogeneous environments

In MapReduce model, a job is divided into a series of map tasks and reduce tasks. The execution time of the job is prolonged by some slow tasks seriously, especially in heterogeneous environments. To finish the slow tasks as soon as possible, current MapReduce schedulers launch a backup task on other nodes for each of the slow tasks. However, traditional MapReduce schedulers cannot detect slow tasks correctly since they cannot estimate the progress of tasks accurately (Hadoop home page http://hadoop.apache.org/, 2011; Zaharia et al. in 8th USENIX symposium on operating systems design and implementation, ACM, New York, pp. 29–42, 2008). To solve this problem, this paper proposes a History-based Auto-Tuning (HAT) MapReduce scheduler, which calculates the progress of tasks accurately and adapts to the continuously varying environment automatically. HAT tunes the weight of each phase of a map task and a reduce task according to the value of them in history tasks and uses the accurate weights of the phases to calculate the progress of current tasks. Based on the accurate-calculated progress of tasks, HAT estimates the remaining time of tasks accurately and further launches backup tasks for the tasks that have the longest remaining time. Experimental results show that HAT can significantly improve the performance of MapReduce applications up to 37% compared with Hadoop and up to 16% compared with LATE scheduler.     

数据中心中DVFS对程序性能影响模型的设计

数据中心以可接受的成本承载着超大规模的互联网应用.数据中心的能源消耗直接影响着数据中心的一次性建造成本和长期维护成本,是数据中心总体持有成本的重要组成部分.现代的数据中心普遍采用DVFS（Dynamic Voltage Frequency Scaling,动态电压频率调节）来提升单节点的能耗表现.但是,DVFS这一类机制同时影响应用的能源消耗和性能,而这一问题尚未被深入探索.本文专注于DVFS机制对应用程序性能的影响,提出了一个分析模型用来量化地刻画应用程序的性能同处理器频率之间的关系,可以预测程序在任意频率下的性能.具体来说,依据执行时访问内存子系统资源的不同,本文把程序的指令为两部分：片上指令和片外指令,并分别独立建模.片上指令指仅需访问片上资源就可以完成执行的指令,其执行时间同处理器频率成线性关系;片外指令指需要访问主存的指令,其执行时间同处理器频率无关.通过上述划分和对每部分执行时间的分别建模,我们可以获得应用程序的执行时间同处理器频率之间的量化模型.我们使用两个不同的平台和SPEC 2006中的所有标准程序验证该模型,平均误差不超过1.34%.     

An efficient grid-scheduling strategy based on a fuzzy matchmaking approach

Computational grids have become an appealing research area as they solve compute-intensive problems within the scientific community and in industry. A grid computational power is aggregated from a huge set of distributed heterogeneous workers; hence, it is becoming a mainstream technology for large-scale distributed resource sharing and system integration. Unfortunately, current grid schedulers suffer from the haste problem, which is the schedule inability to successfully allocate all input tasks. Accordingly, some tasks fail to complete execution as they are allocated to unsuitable workers. Others may not start execution as suitable workers are previously allocated to other peers. This paper is the first to introduce the scheduling haste problem. It also presents a reliable grid scheduler. The proposed scheduler selects the most suitable worker to execute an input grid task using a fuzzy inference system. Hence, it minimizes the turnaround time for a set of grid tasks. Moreover, our scheduler is a system-oriented one as it avoids the scheduling haste problem. Experimental results have shown that the proposed scheduler outperforms traditional grid schedulers as it introduces a better scheduling efficiency.     

An efficient system-oriented grid scheduler based on a fuzzy matchmaking approach

Computational grids have become an appealing research area as they solve compute-intensive problems within the scientific community and in industry. A Grid computational power is aggregated from a huge set of distributed heterogeneous workers; hence, it is becoming a mainstream technology for large-scale distributed resource sharing and system integration. Unfortunately, current grid schedulers suffer from the haste problem, which is the schedule inability to successfully allocate all input tasks. Accordingly, some tasks fail to complete execution as they are allocated to unsuitable workers. Others may not start execution as suitable workers are previously allocated to other peers. This paper is the first to introduce the scheduling haste problem. It also presents a reliable grid scheduler. The proposed scheduler selects the most suitable worker to execute an input grid task using a fuzzy inference system. Hence, it minimizes the turnaround time for a set of grid tasks. Moreover, our scheduler is a system-oriented one as it avoids the scheduling haste problem. Experimental results have shown that the proposed scheduler outperforms traditional grid schedulers as it introduces a better scheduling efficiency.     

基于层次化的网格资源三层调度模型

在分析现有的资源调度方案及模型的基础上,提出了基于层次化的网格资源三层调度模型．它由主调度器、次级调度器和计算节点组成。主调度器根据任务的性质和需求,并参考下层次级调度器的执行情况,将部分任务分发到各次级调度器上,实现了主调度器与次级调度器之间的并行工作。基于该模型提出轮循任务分发策略。通过分析和模拟．该资源调度模型及任务分发策略在调度性能上明显优于集中式调度方案。     

用户QoS感知的GPU集群深度学习任务动态调度

提出一种GPU集群下用户服务质量QoS感知的深度学习研发平台上的动态任务调度方法.采用离线评估模块对深度学习任务进行离线评测并构建计算性能预测模型.在线调度模块基于性能预测模型,结合任务的预期QoS,共同开展任务放置和任务执行顺序的调度.在一个分布式GPU集群实例上的实验表明,该方法相比其他基准策略能够实现更高的QoS保证率和集群资源利用率.     

A semi-static approach to mapping dynamic iterative tasks onto heterogeneous computing systems

Minimization of the execution time of an iterative application in a heterogeneous parallel computing environment requires an appropriate mapping scheme for matching and scheduling the subtasks of a given application onto the processors. Often, some of the characteristics of the application subtasks are unknown a priori or change from iteration to iteration during execution-time based on the inputs being processed. In such a scenario, it may not be feasible to use the same off-line-derived mapping for each iteration of the application. One possibility is to employ a semi-static methodology that starts with an initial mapping but dynamically performs remapping between application iterations by observing the effects of the changing characteristics of the application's input data, called dynamic parameters, on the application's execution time. A contribution in this paper is to implement and evaluate a semi-static methodology involving the on-line use of off-line-derived mappings. The off-line phase is based on a genetic algorithm (GA) to generate high-quality mappings for a range of values for the dynamic parameters. A dynamic parameter space partitioning and sampling scheme is proposed that partitions the parameter space into a number of hyper-rectangles, within which the “best” mapping for each hyper-rectangle is stored in a mapping table. During the on-line phase, the actual dynamic parameters are observed and the off-line-derived mapping table is referenced to choose the most suitable mapping. Experimental results indicate that the semi-static approach outperforms a dynamic on-line approach and performs reasonably close to an infeasible on-line GA approach. Furthermore, the semi-static approach considerably outperforms the method of using the same mapping for all iterations.     

An optimal algorithm for scheduling soft aperiodic tasks indynamic-priority preemptive systems

The paper addresses the problem of jointly scheduling tasks with both hard and soft real time constraints. We present a new analysis applicable to systems scheduled using a priority preemptive dispatcher, with priorities assigned dynamically according to the EDF policy. Further, we present a new efficient online algorithm (the acceptor algorithm) for servicing aperiodic work load. The acceptor transforms a soft aperiodic task into a hard one by assigning a deadline. Once transformed, aperiodic tasks are handled in exactly the same way as periodic tasks with hard deadlines. The proposed algorithm is shown to be optimal in terms of providing the shortest aperiodic response time among fixed and dynamic priority schedulers. It always guarantees the proper execution of periodic hard tasks. The approach is composed of two parts: an offline analysis and a run time scheduler. The offline algorithm runs in pseudopolynomial time O(mn), where n is the number of hard periodic tasks and m is the hyperperiod/min deadline     

Framework for Task Scheduling in Heterogeneous Distributed Computing Using Genetic Algorithms

An algorithm has been developed to dynamically schedule heterogeneous tasks on heterogeneous processors in a distributed system. The scheduler operates in an environment with dynamically changing resources and adapts to variable system resources. It operates in a batch fashion and utilises a genetic algorithm to minimise the total execution time. We have compared our scheduler to six other schedulers, three batch-mode and three immediate-mode schedulers. Experiments show that the algorithm outperforms each of the others and can achieve near optimal efficiency, with up to 100,000 tasks being scheduled     

A methodology to specify three-dimensional interaction using Petri Nets

This work presents a methodology to formally model and to build three-dimensional interaction tasks in virtual environments using three different tools: Petri Nets, the Interaction Technique Decomposition taxonomy, and Object-Oriented techniques. User operations in the virtual environment are represented as Petri Net nodes; these nodes, when linked, represent the interaction process stages. In our methodology, places represent all the states an application can reach, transitions define the conditions to start an action, and tokens embody the data manipulated by the application. As a result of this modeling process we automatically generate the core of the application's source code. We also use a Petri Net execution library to run the application code. In order to facilitate the application modeling, we have adapted Dia, a well-known graphical diagram editor, to support Petri Nets creation and code generation. The integration of these approaches results in a modular application, based on Petri Nets formalism that allows for the specification of an interaction task and for the reuse of developed blocks in new virtual environment projects.     

网格计算环境下任务执行时间的组合预测

有效的资源调度算法提高了任务的执行时间，对优化资源的使用起着非常重要的作用。在网格计算环境下，需要用统计预测的方法对任务的执行时间进行估计。该文提出了任务执行时间的组合预测方法，以任务过去执行时间的观察值为基础，用多种预测方法对任务的执行时间进行估计，用多种预测方法得出的估计值进行组合预测，给出任务执行时间的估计值。实验表明，组合预测要优于单一模型 预测。     

Schedule execution in autonomic manufacturing execution systems

This paper discusses a manufacturing execution system (MES) that prefers and attempts to follow a given schedule. The MES performs this task in an autonomic manner, filling in missing details, providing alternatives for unfeasible assignments, handling auxiliary tasks, and so on. The paper presents the research challenge, depicts the MES design, and gives experimental results. The research contribution resides in the novel architecture in which the MES cooperates with schedulers without inheriting the limitations of the world model employed by the scheduler. The research forms a first development, and a list of further research is given.     

Comparative study of task duplication static scheduling versus clustering and non-clustering techniques

One of the major issues that needs to be addressed in distributed memory multiprocessor (DMM) systems is the program task partitioning and scheduling problems, i.e. mapping of an application program's precedence related task threads among the processing elements of a DMM system. The optimal task partitioning and scheduling problem, with the goal of minimizing the program execution time and interprocessor communication overhead, is known to be an NP-complete problem. The paper addresses the design, development and performance evaluation of a novel static task partitioning and scheduling method called linear clustering with task duplication (LCTD). LCTD employs the linear (sequential) execution of tasks and task duplication heuristics in achieving minimized computation and interprocessor communication delays in DMMs. The superiority of the proposed LCTD algorithm is demonstrated through simulation studies and comparison against several of the existing static scheduling schemes, such as heavy node first (HNF) and linear clustering. We show that the proposed method can obtain an average of 33% improvement in program execution time and 21% improvement in processor utilization compared to linear clustering and HNF methods.     

Usability testing — on a budget: a NASA usability test case study

Abstract

Okay, so you've purchased a graphical user interface (GUI) builder tool to help you quickly build a sophisticated user interface, and your developers promise to follow a particular style guide (e.g., OSF/Motif, Apple/Macintosh) when creating the GUI. This is definitely a step in the right direction, but it is no guarantee that the application's user interface will be usable; that is, where the user interface helps, rather than hinders, the end-users from doing their jobs. Numerous techniques for testing the usability and user satisfaction of an application's GUI are available, such as design walk-throughs, field testing with beta releases, demonstrations of prototypes to future end-users, and user questionnaires. One of the most effective techniques is usability testing with defined tasks and metrics, and yet, it is not commonly used in project development life cycles at the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA). This paper discusses a low-budget, but effective, approach we used at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) to perform structured usability testing. It did not require any additional staff or a usability laboratory, but did successfully identify problems with the application's user interface. The purpose of the usability testing was two-fold: (1) to test the process used in the usability test; and (2) to apply the results of the test to improving the subject software's user interface. This paper will discuss the results from the test and the lessons learned. It will conclude with a discussion of future plans to conduct cost benefit analysis and integrate usability testing as a required step in a project's development life cycle.     

Resource Reservation in Dynamic Real-Time Systems

This paper focuses on the problem of providing efficient run-time support to multimedia applications in a real-time system, where different types of tasks (characterized by different criticality) can coexist. Whereas critical real-time tasks (hard tasks) are guaranteed based on worst-case execution times and minimum interarrival times, multimedia tasks are served based on mean parameters. A novel bandwidth reservation mechanism (the constant bandwidth server) allows real-time tasks to execute in a dynamic environment under a temporal protection mechanism, so that each task will never exceed a predefined bandwidth, independently of its actual requests. The paper also discusses how the proposed server can be used for handling aperiodic tasks efficiently and how a statistical analysis can be applied to perform a probabilistic guarantee of soft tasks. The performance of the proposed method is compared with that of similar service mechanisms (dynamic real-time servers and proportional share schedulers) through extensive simulation experiments.