A load balancing algorithm on multiprocessor time-sharing systems

To use multiprocessor systems efficiently, several load balancing algorithms have been adopted widely. However, most of the algorithms proposed so far can be applied to FCFS systems, and only a few can be applied to time-sharing systems in wide use today. This paper proposes a load balancing algorithm designed to reduce the average response time of processes, introducing a load measure which takes into account the distribution of the work demand of each kind of process. This algorithm can be applied to a multiprocessor system with round-robin scheduling discipline. This algorithm also seems easy to implement on actual systems because load balancing is made by assigning new processes to the lightest loaded processor rather than migrating running processes. According to the simulation experiment, the algorithm proposed here improves the average response time compared with that of the “Join the Shortest Queue” algorithm over all situations investigated.