Reward-based allocation of cluster and grid resources for imprecise computation model-based applications

Utility-based resource management is becoming an emerging issue as the utilisation of cluster resources in Grid computing is growing rapidly. In this paper, we provide a new Imprecise Computation (IC) application model for flexible reward-based Grid resource management. An application in the proposed model consists of multiple independent jobs, in which each job has two parts: mandatory part for the minimum quality and optional part for additional computations. This application model can be applied to QoS-related Grid applications and used in adaptive resource management. We also provide scheduling algorithms for resource allocation of the IC applications based on reward. The profitable optional execution time is analysed for both space-shared and time-shared scheduling policies. Simulation results show that the proposed schemes are beneficial to both users and resource providers in terms of application acceptance rate and total reward.