Job scheduling in heterogeneous distributed systems

This paper investigates scheduling policies in a heterogeneous distributed system, where half of the total processors have double the speed of the others. Processor performance is examined and compared under a variety of workloads. Two job classes are considered. Programs of the first class are dedicated to fast processors, while second class programs are generic in the sense that they can be allocated to any processor. It was our intention to find a policy that increases overall system throughput by increasing the throughput of the generic jobs without seriously degrading performance of the dedicated jobs. However, simulation,results indicate that each scheduling policy considered has its merits and the best performer tended to depend on the degree of multiprogramming. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.