Exploiting process lifetime distributions for dynamic load balancing

@article{HarcholBalter1997ExploitingPL,
  title={Exploiting process lifetime distributions for dynamic load balancing},
  author={Mor Harchol-Balter and Allen B. Downey},
  journal={ACM Trans. Comput. Syst.},
  year={1997},
  volume={15},
  pages={253-285}
}
We consider policies for CPU load balancing in networks of workstations. We address the question of whether preemptive migration (migrating active processes) is necessary, or whether remote execution (migrating processes only at the time of birth) is sufficient for load balancing. We show that resolving this issue is strongly tied to understanding the process lifetime distribution. Our measurements indicate that the distribution of lifetimes for a UNIX process is Pareto (heavy-tailed), with a… 
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223 Citations
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223 Citations

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