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Loop scheduling

Wikipedia contributorsAdapted for Fathomly · View authors
1 min read
Source updated December 19, 2021

In parallel computing, loop scheduling is the problem of assigning proper iterations of parallelizable loops among n processors to achieve load balancing and maintain data locality with minimum dispatch overhead.

Typical loop scheduling methods are:

  • static even scheduling: evenly divide loop iteration space into n chunks and assign each chunk to a processor
  • dynamic scheduling: a chunk of loop iteration is dispatched at runtime by an idle processor. When the chunk size is 1 iteration, it is also called self-scheduling.
  • guided scheduling: similar to dynamic scheduling, but the chunk sizes per dispatch keep shrinking until reaching a preset value.
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This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Loop scheduling”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

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