EXECUTION OF COMPUTE-INTENSIVE APPLICATIONS INTO PARALLEL MACHINES

Scheduling and load balancing of applications on distributed or shared -memory machine architectures can be executed by optimizing algorithms in various levels of the architecture. We are viewing four different levels, namely, the application layer, the compiler layer, the run-tim e layer, and the operating system layer. The approach to scheduling an d load balancing ranges from very specialized and directly dependent o n the application, in the application layer, to a more general approac h taken by the operating system layer. In the application layer, the a pplication's computation is decomposed and evenly assigned to the proc essors, while communication and synchronization are minimized. In addi tion, specific knowledge about the application is taken into account t o select the approach to problem solution. In the compiler layer, the application code is automatically decomposed by the compiler, most of the work being concentrated in the parallelization of language constru cts. In the run-time layer, the results of the application and the com piler layers are implemented. Finally, in the operating system layer, a fair allocation of the processors of the parallel machine is allocat ed to competing applications. (C) Elsevier Science Inc. 1997