Static Load-Balancing Techniques for Iterative Computation on Heterogeneous Clusters

This paper is devoted to static load balancing techniques for mapping iterative algorithms onto heterogeneous clusters. The application data is partitioned over the processors. At each iteration, independent calculations are carried out in parallel, and some communications take place. The question is to determine how to slice the application data into chunks, and to assign these chunks to the processors, so that the total execution time is minimized. We establish a complexity result that assesses the difficulty of this problem, and we design practical heuristics that provide efficient distribution schemes. Key-words: Heterogeneous clusters, static load-balancing techniques, communication, complexity.