Prophet: automated scheduling of SPMD programs in workstation networks

Jon B. Weissman Division of Computer Science University of Texas at San Antonio San Antonio, TX 78249 USA (210-458-5689 voice, 210-458-4437 fax) ([email protected]) Abstract Obtaining efficient execution of parallel programs in workstation networks is a difficult problem for the user. Unlike dedicated parallel computer resources, network resources are shared, heterogeneous, vary in availability, and offer communication performance that is still an order of magnitude slower than parallel computer interconnection networks. Prophet, a system that automatically schedules data parallel SPMD programs in workstation networks for the user has been developed. Prophet uses application and resource information to select the appropriate type and number of workstations, divide the application into component tasks and data across these workstations, and assign tasks to workstations. This system has been integrated into the Mentat parallel processing system developed at the University of Virginia. A suite of scientific Mentat applications have been scheduled using Prophet on a heterogeneous workstation network. The results are promising and demonstrate that scheduling SPMD applications can be automated with good performance1.