IBM invents 'Air Traffic Controllers' to make clouds more efficient

IBM Invents 'Air Traffic Controllers' to Make Clouds More Efficient
by Darryl K. Taft 
 
IBM aims to make cloud environments more efficient and scalable with a new job scheduling system that the company refers to as "air traffic controllers".
IBM researchers have come up with a method of deploying what the company refers to as digital "air traffic controllers'' to help make the cloud computing environment more efficient and more scalable.
The new invention helps manage how resources are used and work is done within a cloud by distributing control throughout the interconnected systems, reducing bottlenecks and increasing efficiency.
The IBM Research-built cloud computing invention, U.S. Patent #8645745: Distributed Job Scheduling in a Multi-Nodal Environment, was originally designed to help manage resources in high-performance computing systems used for government and academic research. These systems consist of hundreds or thousands of computing resources that are connected to perform complex tasks where demands for system resources can rise and fall dynamically—similar to the model for cloud computing, IBM said. "Try to imagine the tens of thousands of airplanes that fly across the United States each day being managed by a single air traffic controller, who must keep track of each one and determine what runways, gates, maintenance facilities, etc., are available at every airport across the country", IBM inventor Eric Barsness, said in a statement.
"The best way to complete that task efficiently and effectively is to break it up to thousands of air traffic controllers, each of which has a view of all resources available and can prioritize and direct traffic accordingly. That's effectively what this invention can do within a cloud computing environment".
 
Full Article