A survey of task mapping on production grids

Grids designed for computationally demanding scientific applications started experimental phases ten years ago and have been continuously delivering computing power to a wide range of applications for more than half of this time. The observation of their emergence and evolution reveals actual constraints and successful approaches to task mapping across administrative boundaries. Beyond differences in distributions, services, protocols, and standards, a common architecture is outlined. Application-agnostic infrastructures built for resource registration, identification, and access control dispatch delegation to grid sites. Efficient task mapping is managed by large, autonomous applications or collaborations that temporarily infiltrate resources for their own benefits.