Analysis of Load Average and its Relationship to Program Run Time on Networks of Workstations
✍ Scribed by Trevor E. Meyer; James A. Davis; Jennifer L. Davidson
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 1997
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 151 KB
- Volume
- 44
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0743-7315
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Parallel processing systems using networks of workstations are being used to provide an alternative to expensive parallel processors. Scheduling of tasks on these networks is an important and practical problem that must be addressed. Although CPU load is an important parameter to many of the proposed scheduling schemes, no quantitative analysis of CPU load and its precise relation to the run time of application programs has to date been presented. The work in this paper describes the experimental analysis of one common load measure, the UNIX load average, and its relationship to the run time of computation-bound parallel programs. Data was gathered using a test application program designed to mimic common applications, performing long bursts of computation with occasional interprocess data exchange over the network. The resulting execution times and measured load averages were then analyzed using regression analysis to detect load-run time trends. This paper describes the test program and the experiments, then details the results of the data analysis. A technique is then presented for the evaluation of the load-run time relationship for a computation-bound program on a network of workstations.