Abstract

High-Performance Computing (HPC) job scheduling involves balancing conflicting objectives such as minimizing makespan, reducing wait times, optimizing resource use, and ensuring fairness. Traditional methods, including heuristic-based (e.g., First-Come-First-Served) or intensive optimization techniques, often lack adaptability to dynamic workloads and heterogeneous HPC systems. To address this, we propose a novel Large Language Model (LLM)-based scheduler using a ReAct-style framework (Reason + Act), enabling iterative, interpretable decision-making. The system incorporates a scratchpad memory to track scheduling history and refine decisions via natural language feedback, while a constraint enforcement module ensures feasibility and safety. We evaluate our approach using OpenAI's O4-Mini and Anthropic's Claude 3.7 across seven real-world HPC workload scenarios, including heterogeneous mixes, bursty patterns, and adversarial cases. Comparisons against FCFS, Shortest Job First, and Google OR-Tools (on 10 to 100 jobs) reveal that LLM-based scheduling effectively balances multiple objectives while offering transparent reasoning through natural language traces. The method excels in constraint satisfaction and adapts to diverse workloads without domain-specific training. However, a trade-off between reasoning quality and computational overhead challenges real-time deployment. This work presents the first comprehensive study of reasoning-capable LLMs for HPC scheduling, demonstrating their potential to handle multiobjective optimization while highlighting limitations in computational efficiency. The findings …

Date

May 29, 2025

Authors

Prachi Jadhav, Hongwei Jin, Ewa Deelman, Prasanna Balaprakash

Journal

arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.02025