The Execution Time Estimation Model for Heterogeneous Clusters and Its Evaluation

A heterogeneous cluster can incur the performance degradation caused by the load unbalance in executing the application for homogeneous cluster. Also, the total execution time can be improved by neglecting some of the PEs because communication time is reduced. This study examines to invoke multiple processes on fast processing elements (PEs) to avoid load unbalance. In this study, the execution time of each PE is firstly modeled from measurement results. Then, the derived model is used to estimate the optimal PE configuration and process configuration. We implemented the models for HPL (N = 400–6400), and estimated the optimal configuration for N = 3200–9600. The error of the estimated execution time was 0%–9% of the actual optimal execution time.