A Java CPU calibration tool for load balancing in distributed applications

This article presents a method for evaluating the CPU power, independently from the system used, in heterogeneous networks of workstations. It is based on the use of Java language in order to ensure application portability and more particularly on the mechanism of thread CPU processing time measurement introduced in the version 1.5 of Sun Java. That tool will be integrated into the load balancing mechanism which is totally written in Java and that we developed in the LIFL project ADAJ. We show how to evaluate the potential power of the CPU with a software totally written in Java. Moreover, we will justify the results provided by our approach. We will also analyse the exploitation of the calibration tool in order to improve the execution time of parallel and distributed applications in the context of load balancing in a network of workstations.