Reducing the number of miscreant tasks executions in a multi-use cluster

McGough, A.S.; Forshaw, M.; Gerrard, C.; Wheater, S.; Liu, Jianxun; Chen, Jinjun; Xu, Guandong

Abstract

Exploiting computational resources within an organisation for more than their primary task offers great benefits – making better use of capital expenditure and provides a pool of computational power. This can be achieved through the deployment of a cycle stealing distributed system, where tasks execute during the idle time on computers. However, if a task has not completed when a computer returns to its primary function the task will be preempted, wasting time (and energy), and is often reallocated to a new resource in an attempt to complete. This becomes exacerbated when tasks are incapable of completing due to excessive execution time or faulty hardware / software, leading to a situation where tasks are perpetually reallocated between computers – wasting time and energy. In this work we investigate techniques to increase the chance of ‘good’ tasks completing whilst curtailing the execution of ‘bad’ tasks. We demonstrate, through simulation, that we could have reduce the energy consumption of our cycle stealing system by approximately 50%.

Citation

McGough, A., Forshaw, M., Gerrard, C., Wheater, S., Liu, J., Chen, J., & Xu, G. (2012). Reducing the number of miscreant tasks executions in a multi-use cluster. In Second International Conference on Coud and Green Computing / Second International Conference on Social Computing and its Applications (CGC/SCA 2012) ; proceedings (296-303). https://doi.org/10.1109/cgc.2012.111

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (Published)
• Conference Name: 2012 Second International Conference on Cloud and Green Computing
• Publication Date: Nov 1, 2012
• Deposit Date: Oct 1, 2013
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 12, 2016
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Pages: 296-303
• Book Title: Second International Conference on Coud and Green Computing / Second International Conference on Social Computing and its Applications (CGC/SCA 2012) ; proceedings.
• ISBN: 9781467330275
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/cgc.2012.111
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1155167