Load Balancing Strategies for Distributed Memory Machines

Ralf Diekmann, Burkhard Monien, and Robert Preis
University of Paderborn, FB17
Fuerstenallee 11, D-33102 Paderborn
e-mail: {diek, bm, robsy}@uni-paderborn.de


Load balancing in large parallel systems with distributed memory is a difficult task often influencing the overall efficiency of applications substantially. A number of efficient distributed load balancing strategies have been developed in the recent years. Although they are currently not generally available as part of parallel operating systems, it is often not difficult to integrate them into applications. This paper gives a classification of different load balancing problems based on application characteristics. For the case of applications out of the field of scientific computing, useful methods are described in more detail.

Full paper in compressed postscript.