Patent ID: 7082606

Claim:
A method for job scheduling in a dedicated heterogeneous multi-node computing environment, the method comprising: grouping the nodes into homogeneous node sub-pools each comprising nodes of equal capacity; for each sub-pool, creating a corresponding free node schedule which charts a number of free nodes in the sub-pool over time; receiving a plurality of jobs to be scheduled; ordering the jobs by job priority; for each job in order of job priority, (a) identifying a conforming sub-pool set comprising conforming nodes of sufficient capacity suitable for use by the job, (b) determining an earliest available time range from the free node schedule(s) of the conforming sub-pool set, where the earliest available time range has a sufficient duration and a sufficient number of conforming free nodes to complete the job, and (c) scheduling the job for execution in the earliest available time range; and executing the jobs at their respective earliest available time ranges.