Parallax: a tool for parallel program scheduling

Parallax, a scheduling tool that incorporates seven traditional and nontraditional scheduling heuristics and lets developers compare their performance for real applications on real parallel machines, is discussed. Of the seven heuristics, two simple ones consider only task execution time, two consider both task execution and message-passing delay times, two use task duplication to reduce communication delay, and one considers communication delays, task execution time, and target machine characteristics such as interconnection network topology and overhead due to message-passing and process creation. Two examples of parallel applications of Parallax are described.<>