Analysis of fork-join program response times on multiprocessors

Models for two processor sharing policies called task scheduling processor sharing and job scheduling processor sharing are developed and analyzed. The first policy schedules each task independently and allows parallel execution of an individual program, whereas the second policy schedules each job as a unit, thereby not allowing parallel execution of an individual program. It is found that task scheduling performs better than job scheduling for most system parameter values. The performance of the task scheduling processor sharing is compared to a first come first serve policy. First come first serve performs better than processor sharing over a wide range of system parameters. Processor sharing performs best when the task service time variability is high. The performance of processor sharing and first come first serve is studied with two classes of jobs, and for when a specific number of processors is statically assigned to each of the classes