Comparative Performance Analysis of Job Scheduling Algorithms in a Real-World Scientific Application

Puntel, Fernando Emilio; Charão, Andrea Schwertner; Petry, Adriano

In High Performance Computing, it is common to deal with substantial computing resources, and the use of a Resource Management System (RMS) becomes fundamental. The job scheduling algorithm is a key part of a RMS, and the selection of the best job scheduling that meets the user needs is of most relevance. In this work, we use a real-world scientific application to evaluate the performance of 4 different job scheduling algorithms: First in, first out (FIFO), Shortest Job First (SJF), EASY-backfilling and Fattened-backfilling. These algorithms worked with RMS SLURM workload manager, considering a scientific application that predicts the earth’s ionosphere dynamics. In the results we highlight each algorithm’s strength and weakness for different scenarios that change the possibility of advancing smaller jobs. To deepen our analysis, we also compared the job scheduling algorithms using 4 jobs of Numerical Aerodynamic Sampling (NAS) Parallel Benchmarks in a controlled scenario.