Parallel load balancing for dynamic execution environments Original Research Article

The development and implementation of a new method for parallel dynamic load balancing is presented. The load balancer uses an octree-based method to calculate the amount of imbalance and determine a new partitioning for the hybrid mesh. The balancer is designed to redistribute the work when the loads on the processors change due to local mesh adaptation or to changes in the parallel execution system. For the case of a dynamic parallel system, the loads on the processors are determined by run time measurements and the balancer redistributes the work based on these timings. Since the load balancer uses the same octree-based technique employed by the partitioner, the overall change in the partitions is minimized and a reduced amount of data migration is realized. The qualities of the partitions are maintained even after multiple load balancings. The effectiveness of the dynamic load balancer is demonstrated via parallel execution times for adaptive turbulent flow simulations.