ylfink@water.UUCP (10/09/87)
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO
SEMINAR ACTIVITIES
DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS SEMINAR
- Thursday, October 22, 1987
Professor Derek Eager, from the University of
Saskatchewan, will speak on ``Adaptive Load Sharing in
Distributed Systems''.
TIME: 3:30 PM
ROOM: MC 6091A
ABSTRACT
A distributed computer system consists of a collection
of individual systems (nodes) that share resources.
Distributed systems utilizing adaptive load sharing
attempt to share processing power, and thus improve
performance, by transparently transferring work between
nodes. The substantial potential benefits of load
sharing have prompted a number of studies of various
alternative specific policies, as well as the
implementation of various system mechanisms to support
load sharing.
This talk concerns several fundamental questions
regarding the appropriate level of complexity of load
sharing policies. Evidence is presented suggesting
that policies that collect only small amounts of system
state information, and that use this information in
simple ways, yield most of the possible performance
benefits. Also considered in the talk are the
additional benefits that are potentially offered by
load sharing policies that will perform ``migration''
(the movement of jobs that have initiated execution) in
comparison to the simpler non-migratory policies that
rely solely on ``initial placement''.