Analyzing the Robustness of Scheduling Algorithms Using Divisible Load Theory on Heterogeneous Systems

Arbitrarily divisible workloads are present in a large class of scientific applications, such as N-body simulations, Monte Carlo simulations, CFD applications, and others. Divisible load theory (DLT) provides a tractable approach to the scheduling of arbitrarily divisible workloads. High performance parallel and distributed systems may operate in an unreliable environment, and a robust system is expected to deliver a certain level of performance when operating in such an environment. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to study and analyze the robustness of DLT algorithms. Using simulations, a study of the resiliency of DLT to variations in certain system features, such as the network latency, the network bandwidth, and the processor availability on a single level tree topology is presented. The simulation results demonstrate the robustness of the DLT algorithms under certain application and system characteristics.