Toward a Framework for Preparing and Executing Adaptive Grid Programs

This paper describes the program execution framework being developed by the Grid Application Development Software (GrADS) Project. The goal of this framework is to provide good resource allocation for Grid applications and to support adaptive reallocation if performance degrades because of changes in the availability of Grid resources. At the heart of this strategy is the notion of a configurable object program, which contains, in addition to application code, strategies for mapping the application to different collections of resources and a resource selection model that provides an estimate of the performance of the application on a specific collection of Grid resources. This model must be accurate enough to distinguish collections of resources that will deliver good performance from those that will not. The GrADS execution framework also provides a contract monitoring mechanism for interrupting and remapping an application execution when performance falls below acceptable levels.