Job relocation: a method to enhance the performance of gang scheduling on clusters of PCs

Resource allocation and reallocation are very important issues affecting the performance of gang scheduling. Currently most gang scheduling systems adopt regular allocation policies. For many existing clusters of PCs, however, processors are interconnected via a fast Ethernet or a crossbar switch network and the location of processors is not a significant factor when communication costs are considered. Adopting regular allocation policies may cause unnecessary problems of fragmentation. We introduce a job-relocation method to alleviate the fragmentation problem.