Dynamic scheduling for heterogeneous Desktop Grids

Desktop Grids have emerged as an important methodology to harness the idle cycles of millions of participant desktop PCs over the Internet. However, to effectively utilize the resources of a Desktop Grid, it is necessary to use scheduling policies suitable for such systems. In this paper, we analyze the performance of a policy which is shown to perform well in highly heterogeneous Desktop Grids. The policy utilizes the solution to a linear programming (LP) problem which maximizes system capacity. We suggest robust modifications to address several limitations of the policy.