Patent ID: 8266624

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, by a dispatching computer system, a notification of an available computer resource, the notification identifying one or more hardware characteristics of the available computer resource, the notification being generated when a worker process running on the available computer resource determines that the available computer resource is able to execute a task; upon receiving the notification of the available computer resource, accessing a data store of a plurality of tasks requiring specific hardware characteristics; generating, from the plurality of tasks, a set of tasks eligible to be performed by the available computer resource based on matching hardware characteristics; selecting a highest priority task from the set of eligible tasks; dispatching the highest priority task to the available computer resource for execution, the highest priority task testing a software package on a predetermined system architecture under a predetermined version; monitoring an execution of the highest priority task; comparing a result of the highest priority task during the execution against a current predefined outcome; setting the result of the highest priority task as a new predefined outcome if the result of the highest priority task supersedes the current predefined outcome; and terminating the highest priority task if the highest priority task exceeds an execution limit, the execution limit comprising at least one of a memory limit, a disk limit, a central processor unit (“CPU”) time limit, or a wall-clock time limit.