A steward node manages jobs authorized by other users or assigned by stewards. A participant node bids jobs and execute the assigned job from the steward. Role assignments of nodes are based on every individual job. Hence, a node can play one or more roles at the same time for different jobs. Processors are connected by a logical graph.
Jobs are atomic.
Jobs can not be partitioned further into smaller parts. The Osculant scheduler runs on a collection of private owned workstations. Local users can access their machine freely. Processors can join or leave the system freely. The first assumption addresses that the studies of Osculant will concentrate on the task scheduling rather than on parallel algorithms.