Communication-Intensive Parallel Applications and Non-dedicated Clusters of Workstations

Time-sharing operating systems may delay application processing of incoming messages because other processes are scheduled when the messages arrive. In this paper, we present a simple adjustment to application polling behavior that reduces this effect when the parallel process competes with CPU-intensive sequential jobs. Our results showed that moderate improvement might be achieved. However, the effectiveness of the approach is highly application-dependent.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1999
• Where: IPPS
• Authors: Kritchalach Thitikamol, Peter J. Keleher
• Keywords: Application Polling Behavior, CPU-intensive Sequential Jobs, Distributed And Parallel Computing, IPPS 1999, Time-sharing Operating Systems