Competitive Execution in a Distributed Environment
Sung-Hyun Cho, Andrew Kahng, Mário Gerla, David R. Jefferson, Committee Chair · 1996
of the Dissertation Competitive Execution in a Distributed Environment by Sung Hyun Cho Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science University of California, Los Angeles, 1996 Professor David R. Jefferson, Chair We propose an alternative to process migration, called competition, to speed up distributed programs in the background on a network of variable-speed processors. Competition protocols are transparent operating system facilities that involve creating multiple instances (called clones) p 1 , p 2 , etc. of a process P on different variable-speed processors, and making clones "compete", i.e., attempting to guarantee that the output of the clone that is farthest "ahead" is fed to the rest of the computation, and that the entire application's performance tracks that of the clone which is farthest ahead. One clone may be ahead of or behind others depending on the current foreground loads. If for any reason there is variation in the progress of the clones, so that one clone is ahead at ...