Patent ID: 8230426

Claim:
A method of processing data in a distributed computing system, the method comprising: receiving, by a multiprocessor and/or multi-processor core computing resource included in a distributed computing system and from a control server, a list of available work units, wherein the list of available work units includes concurrency attributes associated with the available work units, wherein the concurrency attributes specify how at least a portion of the available work units may be executed on the multiprocessor and/or multi-processor core computing resource having greater than a minimum hardware configuration as specified by at least one attribute associated with the work unit; determining a selection of at least one of the available work units from the list of available work units based on the concurrency attributes; communicating the selection with the control server; receiving, by the computing resource, at least one work unit assignment from the control server, wherein the work unit assignment is associated with at least one of the available work units included in the selection; and performing, by the computing resource included in the distributed computing system, the work unit assignment; wherein determining a selection includes: determining parallel processing characteristics of at least the computing resource; comparing the concurrency attributes of the available work units with the parallel processing characteristics to identify concurrency attributes of the available work units that are compatible with the parallel processing characteristics; and determining the selection of available work units based on the comparison of the concurrency attributes with the parallel processing characteristics.