Toward Convergence in Job Schedulers for Parallel Supercomputers

. The space of job schedulers for parallel supercomputers is rather fragmented, because different researchers tend to make different assumptions about the goals of the scheduler, the information that is available about the workload, and the operations that the scheduler may perform. We argue that by identifying these assumptions explicitly, it is possible to reach a level of convergence. For example, it is possible to unite most of the different assumptions into a common framework by associating a suitable cost function with the execution of each job. The cost function reflects knowledge about the job and the degree to which it fits the goals of the system. Given such cost functions, scheduling is done to maximize the system's profit. 1 Introduction Both theoreticians and practitioners have been investigating and implementing various types of schedulers, and analyzing their performance over a wide range of workloads, leading to a large and varied body of knowledge [13]. How..