Dynamic Load Balancing for Data-Parallel MPI Programs
William L. George · 1999
This paper describes the load-balancing support available in DParLib, a library of MPI-based routines that support the data-parallel style of programming in MPI. The basic structure of DParLib is described with a focus on the parts of the library needed to support the distribution and re-distribution of arrays. Keywords--- MPI, data-parallel, load balancing, library I. Introduction T HIS paper describes the load-balancing support available in DParLib, a library of MPI-based routines that support the data-parallel style of programming in MPI. Load-balancing in this paper refers to the effort to keep all processors equally busy doing productive work. The problem of distributing the computational load among the processors of a parallel machine has been with us as long as distributed computing itself. The problem has been studied both in its general sense and in relation to specific algorithms [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]. This paper is less about the specific algorithms used to comput...