A Uniform Framework for Dynamic Load Balancing Strategies in Distributed Processing Systems

Abstract

Load balancing plays a central role in processor utilizations in distributed systems. Several strategies have been proposed in the literature to achieve load balancing. Usually, these strategies attempt to achieve a tradeoff between reducing the execution time of an application and minimizing the synchronization and the communication overhead. In this paper, we present a general model in which load balancing decisions are reached by enforcing performance metrics which may be adapted to reflect the specific requirements of different environments. Many of the load balancing schemes that have been suggested in the literature can be viewed as specific instances of the general framework presented in this paper. The basic scheme in this framework uses a load contention number that accounts for the load of the processors, the communication cost and the distance among processors. It is meant to be adaptable to the overall load on the system, the load on the communication devices, the run time characteristics of the tasks, and the configuration of the system. Furthermore, its implementation is not computationally complex. Thus, the gains made by load balancing are not overshadowed by the load balancing cost.