Using Run-Time Predictions to Estimate Queue Wait Times and Improve Scheduler Performance

On many computers, a request to run a job is not serviced immediately but instead is placed in a queue and serviced only when resources are released by preceding jobs. In this paper, we build on run-time prediction techniques that we developed in previous research to explore two problems. The rst problem is to predict how long applications will wait in a queue until they receive resources. We show that run-time estimates can be used for this and that using our run-time estimates result in more accurate wait-time predictions than when the run-time prediction techniques of other researches are used. The second problem we investigate is improving scheduling performance. We use run-time predictions to improve the performance of the least work rst and back ll scheduling algorithms. We nd that using our run-time predictor results in lower mean wait times for the workloads with higher o ered loads when compared to alternative run-time predictors.