A grid resource allocation mechanism for heterogeneous e-waste computers

While most grids and clusters are built from uniform nodes of new hardware, the notion of a grid of obsolete computers rescued from the scrapheap appeals in several ways such as lower environmental and financial cost. Existing resource allocation mechanisms, in assuming that nodes are equally capable, equally power efficient and equally reliable, fail to cater for the distinct features of an e-waste grid. This paper presents a resource allocation mechanism explicitly designed with the features of such an e-waste grid in mind, proposes an objective function to assess the mechanism, and tests the mechanism against two existing resource allocation mechanisms. In simulated tests of the three mechanisms, the new mechanism performs better than the other two, particularly under heavy load.