International Business Machines Corporation

Surendra Kumar Verma

Bruce Gilbert Lindsay

Eugene Jon Shekita

Honesty Cheng Young

Jyh-Herng Chow

John Frederick Hornibrook

Amit Radheshyam Somani

Geoffrey Peddle

In a multiprocessing system, multiple concurrently operating task execution units are operated to perform an aggregate task by using incremental and on-demand sub-task allocation. A command is received to perform a machine-executed task divisible into multiple sub-tasks, i.e., an &ldquo;aggregate task&rdquo;. A granularity is then established, for dividing the aggregate task into sub-tasks. Preferably, the granularity is not too large to permit potentially uneven sub-task allocation, and not too small to incur excessive overhead in allocating sub-tasks. Having established the granularity, multiple task execution units are independently operated on-demand to sequentially self-allocate and execute sub-tasks of the aggregate tasks. Each sub-task is sized according to the established granularity. Operating &ldquo;on-demand&rdquo;, each task execution unit sequentially allocates and executes one sub-task at a time, then proceeding to the next unexecuted sub-task. Thus, the multiprocessing system operates like multiple people drinking water from a common glass through individual straws&mdash;although each drinker works independently, all finish simultaneously, thus completing the aggregate task as expeditiously as possible.

Aggregate job performance in a multiprocessing system by incremental and on-demand task allocation among multiple concurrently operating threads

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Bellevue, WA, United States of America

Surendra Kumar Verma