Research on the task assignment problem with maximum benefits in volunteer computing platforms

Abstract

As a type of distributed computing, volunteer computing (VC) has provided unlimited computing capacity at a low cost in recent decades. The architecture of most volunteer computing platforms (VCPs) is a master-worker model, which defines a master-slave relationship. Therefore, VCPs can be considered asymmetric multiprocessing systems (AMSs). As AMSs, VCPs are very promising for providing computing services for users. Users can submit tasks with deadline constraints to the VCPs. If the tasks are completed within their deadlines, VCPs will obtain the benefits. For this application scenario, this paper proposes a new task assignment problem with the maximum benefits in VCPs for the first time. To address the problem, we first proposed a list-based task assignment (LTA) strategy, and we proved that the LTA strategy could complete the task with a deadline constraint as soon as possible. Then, based on the LTA strategy, we proposed a maximum benefit scheduling (MBS) algorithm, which aimed at maximizing the benefits of VCPs. The MBS algorithm determined the acceptable tasks using a pruning strategy. Finally, the experiment results show that our proposed algorithm is more effective than current algorithms in the aspects of benefits, task acceptance rate and task completion rate.