SOFTWARE: Automatic Resource Selection in Dynamic Networked Computation Environments

University Of Houston, Houston TX

Investigators

Abstract

This project will perform fundamental research in middleware for resource selection in dynamically shared network environments such as computation grids. The distinguishing feature of our approach is that it matches the application resource requirements to the resources available on a network rather than selecting the "best" nodes based on a fixed criterion. The key challenge is to estimate how a given application will perform on a given set of nodes under given network conditions. The project will investigate two different approaches to address this challenge. The first one is based on a "heterogeneous performance model", which is a model to predict application execution time under different resource availability scenarios, such as different speed processing nodes and network links and different competing loads and traffic. The second is based on the concept of a "performance skeleton program", which is a synthetically generated short running program that has the same fundamental execution characteristics as a given application. Under the same network conditions, the execution time of a performance skeleton program is expected to be a fixed small fraction of the expected execution time of the application it represents. The implementation of both these approaches is based on experimental measurement of the resources that an application uses during execution. The procedure is based on monitoring the processor, network and memory activity generated by an application during execution on a controlled testbed. The project aims to develop a complete resource selection framework for grid computing environments based on matching these application information models to the network status information obtained from publicly available network measurement and prediction tools like the Network Weather Service.