Dynamic load balancing by diffusion in heterogeneous systems
The distributed environments constitute a major option for the future development of high-performance computing. In order to be able to efficiently execute parallel applications on such systems, one should ensure a fair utilization of the available resources. Here, we address a number of aspects regarding the generalization of the diffusion algorithms for the case when the processors have different relative speeds and the communication parameters have different values. Although some work has been done in this direction, we propose complementary results and we investigate other variants than those commonly used. In a first step, we discuss general aspects of the generalized diffusion. Bounds are formulated for the convergence factor and an explicit expression is given for the migration flow generated by such algorithms. It is shown that this flow has an important property, that is a scaled projection of all other balancing flows. In the second part, a variant of generalized diffusion is investigated. Complexity results are formulated and it is shown that this algorithm theoretically converges faster than the hydrodynamic algorithm. Comparative tests between different variants of generalized diffusion algorithms are performed. (C) 2004 Published by Elsevier Inc.
dynamic load balancing generalized diffusion balancing flow heterogeneous environments adaptive computations