Usefulness of adaptive load sharing for parallel processing on networks ofworkstations

Networks of workstations (NOWs) can be used for parallel processing by usin g public domain software like PVM, However, NOW-based parallel processing s uffers from node heterogeneity, background load variations, and high-latenc y, low-bandwidth communication network. Previous studies on load sharing in NOW-based systems have indicated that, for applications using the work-pil e model, a simple load sharing scheme in which the master process gives a f ixed amount of work to the slave processes performs as well as any other, m ore complex schemes. In this paper, we propose a new adaptive load sharing scheme and evaluate its performance using a Pentium-based NOW machine, The communication network used in the system consists of the standard 10 Mbps E thernet and the 100 Mbps fast Ethernet, We use both these networks to study their impact on the performance of our new policy. The results presented h ere indicate that the new policy is useful for computation-intensive applic ations. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.