Constraint Programming-Based Job Dispatching for Modern HPC Applications

HPC systems are increasingly being used for big data analytics and predictive model building that employ many short jobs. In these application scenarios, HPC job dispatchers need to process large numbers of short jobs quickly and make decisions on-line while ensuring high Quality-of-Service (QoS) levels and meet demanding timing requirements. Constraint Programming (CP) is an effective approach for tackling job dispatching problems. Yet, the state-of-the-art CP-based job dispatchers are unable to satisfy the challenges of on-line dispatching and take advantage of job duration predictions. These limitations jeopardize achieving high QoS levels, and consequently impede the adoption of CP-based dispatchers in HPC systems. We propose a class of CP-based dispatchers that are more suitable for HPC systems running modern applications. The new dispatchers are able to reduce the time required for generating on-line dispatching decisions significantly, and are able to make effective use of job duration predictions to decrease waiting times and job slowdowns, especially for workloads dominated by short jobs.