Task allocation for minimizing programs completion time in multicomputer systems

Abstract

Task allocation is one of the biggest issues in the area of parallel and distributed computing. Given a parallel program composed of M communicating modules (tasks) and a multicomputer system of N processors with a specific interconnection network, the problem is how to assign the program modules onto the available processors in the system so as to minimize the entire program completion time. This problem is known to be NP-complete and therefore untractable as soon as the number of tasks and/or processors exceeds a few units. This paper presents a heuristic algorithm, derived from Simulated Annealing, to this problem taking into account several kinds of constraints. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated through experimental study on randomly generated instances that being allocated into a multicomputer system of bus topology. Furthermore, the quality of solutions are compared with those derived using the Branch-and-Bound on the same sample problems. © Springer-Verlag 2004.