Accession Number:

ADA272898

Title:

Distributed Computing Feasibility in a Non-Dedicated Homogeneous Distributed System

Descriptive Note:

Contract rept.,

Corporate Author:

INSTITUTE FOR COMPUTER APPLICATIONS IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING HAMPTON VA

Personal Author(s):

• Leutenegger, Scott T.
• Sun, Xian-He

Report Date:

1993-09-01

Pagination or Media Count:

25.0

Abstract:

The low cost and availability of clusters of workstations have lead researchers to re-explore distributed computing using independent workstations. This approach may provide better costperformance than tightly coupled multiprocessors. In practice, this approach often utilizes wasted cycles to run parallel jobs. In this paper we address the feasibility of such a non-dedicated parallel processing environment assuming workstation processes have preemptive priority over parallel tasks. We develop an analytical model to predict parallel job response times. Our model provides insight into how significantly workstation owner interference degrades parallel program performance. A new term task ratio, which relates the parallel task demand to the mean service demand of non parallel workstation processes, is introduced. We propose that tank ratio is a useful metric for determining how large the demand of a parallel applications must be in order to make efficient use of a non-dedicated distributed system. Distributed systems, Parallel computing.

Descriptors:

• *DISTRIBUTED DATA PROCESSING
• *PARALLEL PROCESSING
• RATIOS
• CYCLES
• RESPONSE
• MULTIPROCESSORS
• APPROACH
• MEAN
• INTERFERENCE
• AVAILABILITY
• MODELS
• LOW COSTS

Subject Categories:

• Computer Programming and Software
• Computer Systems

Distribution Statement:

APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE