Latency hiding in dynamic partitioning and load balancing of grid computing applications

The Information Power Grid (IPG) concept developed by NASA is aimed to provide a metacomputing platform for large-scale distributed computations, by hiding the intricacies of a highly heterogeneous environment and yet maintaining adequate security. In this paper, we propose a latency-tolerant partitioning scheme that dynamically balances processor workloads on the IPG, and minimizes data movement and runtime communication. By simulating an unsteady adaptive mesh application on a wide area network, we study the performance of our load balancer under the Globus environment. The number of IPG nodes, the number of processors per node, and the interconnect speeds are parameterized to derive conditions under which the IPG would be suitable for parallel distributed processing of such applications. Experimental results demonstrate that effective solutions are achieved when the IPG nodes are connected by a high-speed asynchronous interconnection network.