Load sharing in heterogeneous distributed systems

Load sharing is key to the efficient operation of distributed systems. The paper investigates load sharing policies in a heterogeneous distributed system, where half of the total processors have double the speed of the others. Processor performance is examined and compared under a variety of workloads. Two job classes are considered. Programs of the first class are dedicated to fast processors, while second class programs are generic in the sense that they can be allocated to any processor. The objective is to find a policy that results in good overall performance while maintaining the fairness of individual job classes. Simulation results indicate that the performance of the best method depends on system load.