A Resource Management System for Adaptive Parallel Applications in Cluster Environments

Adaptive parallel applications that can change resources during execution, promise better system utilization and increased application performance. Furthermore, they open the opportunity for developing a new class of parallel applications driven by unpredictable data and events, capable of amassing huge resources on demand. This paper discusses some of the requirements for a resource management system to support such applications including communication and negotiation of resources. To schedule adaptive applications, interaction between the applications and the resource management system is necessary. While managing adaptive applications is a multidimensional complex research problem, this paper focuses only on support that a RMS requires to accommodate adaptive applications. An early prototype implementation shows that scheduling of adaptive applications is possible in a cluster environment and that the overhead of management of applications is low compared to the long running time of typical parallel applications. The prototype implementation supports a variety of adaptive parallel applications in addition to rigid parallel applications. 1