Improving utilization of heterogeneous clusters

Datacenters often agglutinate sets of nodes with different capabilities, leading to a sub-optimal resource utilization. One of the best ways of improving utilization is to balance the load by taking into account the heterogeneity of these clusters. This article presents a novel way of expressing computational capacity, more adequate for heterogeneous clusters, and also advocates for task migration in order to further improve the utilization. The experimental evaluation shows that both proposals are advantageous and allow improving the utilization of heterogeneous clusters and reducing the makespan to 16.7% and 17.1%, respectively.This work has been supported by the Spanish Science and Technology Commission under contracts TIN2016-76635-C2-2-R and TIN2016-81840-REDT (CAPAP-H6 network) and the European HiPEAC Network of Excellenc

A Robust Consensus Algorithm for Current Sharing and Voltage Regulation in DC Microgrids

In this paper a novel distributed control algorithm for current sharing and voltage regulation in Direct Current (DC) microgrids is proposed. The DC microgrid is composed of several Distributed Generation units (DGUs), including Buck converters and current loads. The considered model permits an arbitrary network topology and is affected by unknown load demand and modelling uncertainties. The proposed control strategy exploits a communication network to achieve proportional current sharing using a consensus-like algorithm. Voltage regulation is achieved by constraining the system to a suitable manifold. Two robust control strategies of Sliding Mode (SM) type are developed to reach the desired manifold in a finite time. The proposed control scheme is formally analyzed, proving the achievement of proportional current sharing, while guaranteeing that the weighted average voltage of the microgrid is identical to the weighted average of the voltage references.Comment: 12 page