Run-time Support for Scheduling Parallel Applications in Heterogeneous NOWs

This paper describes the current state of Prophet --- a system that provides run-time scheduling support for parallel applications in heterogeneous workstation networks. Prior work on Prophet [10][12] demonstrated that scheduling SPMD applications could be effectively automated with excellent performance. Enhancements have been made to Prophet to broaden its use to other application types including parallel pipelines, and to make more effective use of dynamic system state information to further improve performance. The results indicate that both SPMD and parallel pipeline applications can be scheduled to produce reduced completion time by exploiting the application structure and run-time information. 1 1.0 Introduction Providing run-time support is crucial for the efficient execution of parallel applications in shared heterogeneous workstation networks. In this environment, scheduling decisions must be deferred until run-time when the status of CPU, network, and memory resources are ..