Patent ID: 7853949

Claim:
A method of making fractional assignments of processing elements to processing nodes for stream-based applications in a distributed computer system, comprising: determining an amount of processing power to give to each processing element by providing a quantity method to determine processing goals for each processing element for a next epoch, wherein the quantity method receives input from a macro model; determining a list of candidate processing nodes to which each processing element can be assigned; determining, based on a list of acceptable processing nodes, fractions of which processing nodes which will work on each processing element by providing a where method configured to minimize differences between goals output by the quantity method and achieved allocations of resources; updating allocations of the amount of processing power and the fractions to increase overall importance of work in the distributed system; reacting to changes in importance of the work by reallocating the amount of processing power and the fractions; and fixing assignments of the processing elements to the processing nodes.