A model of task migration in partitionable parallel processing systems

The effects of task migration (i.e. movement of a task from one partition to another) in systems with multistage cube or hypercube networks are studied. Direct overhead encompasses the cost of moving the task when no other tasks affect the migration, while indirect overhead is the additional time needed for migration that is due to influences of other tasks. The sum of direct and indirect overhead is the time needed to migrate a task. In addition, the migration can affect other tasks, and thus can incur a migration penalty. The indirect overhead and migration penalty represent the interference that can occur in the interconnection network between the migrating task and other tasks attempting to use the network simultaneously. A model for parameterizing migration costs is given. This research is part of the PASM parallel-processing project.<
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