Robust resource allocation in a cluster based imaging system

0167-8191/$ see front matter 2009 Elsevier B.V doi:10.1016/j.parco.2009.03.001 q The robustness portions of this research were su Endowment. * Corresponding author. Address: DigitalGlobe, Lo E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J @infoprint.com (S. Price), [email protected] Recently there has been an increased demand for imaging systems in support of highspeed digital printing. The required increase in performance in support of such systems can be accomplished through an effective parallel execution of image processing applications in a distributed cluster computing environment. The output of the system must be presented to a raster based display at regular intervals, effectively establishing a hard deadline for the production of each image. Failure to complete a rasterization task before its deadline will result in an interruption of service that is unacceptable. The goal of this research was to derive a metric for measuring robustness in this environment and to design a resource allocation heuristic capable of completing each rasterization task before its assigned deadline, thus, preventing any service interruptions. We present a mathematical model of such a cluster based raster imaging system, derive a robustness metric for evaluating heuristics in this environment, and demonstrate using the metric to make resource allocation decisions. The heuristics are evaluated within a simulation of the studied raster imaging system. We clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of the heuristics by comparing their results with the results of a resource allocation heuristic commonly used in this type of system. 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.