Dynamic Load Balancing with Group Communication

This work considers the problem of efficiently performing a set of tasks using a network of processors in the setting where the network is subject to dynamic reconfigurations, including partitions and merges. A key challenge for this setting is the implementation of dynamic load balancing that reduces the number of tasks that are performed redundantly because of the reconfigurations. We explore new approaches for load balancing in dynamic networks that can be employed by applications using a group communication service. The group communication services that we consider include a membership service (establishing new groups to reflect dynamic changes) but does not include maintenance of a primary component. For the n-processor, n-task load balancing problem defined in this work, the following specific results are obtained.