System and method for controlled sharing of consumable resources in a computer cluster

A system comprising:

• means, including one or more processors, for grouping tasks into reservations;
• means, including one or more processors, for empirically analyzing, by at least one process on a computer system, a set of active reservations and a current set of consumable resources belonging to a class of consumable resources, wherein the empirically analyzing comprises computing a flow-control clocking weight for each reservation of the set of active reservations and each active reservation is of a managed task type and comprises a group of one or more tasks with access to a consumable resource of the class;
• means for clocking, including one or more processors, the set of active reservations each clocking cycle of a virtual clock based on the empirically analyzing;
• and
• means, including one or more processors, for sorting, by the at least one process, a priority queue of the set of active reservations responsive to the clocking, wherein:
• means for sorting comprises means for sorting the priority queue by wait-times;
• the wait-times comprising a wait-time for each active reservation in the set of active reservations;
• and
• each wait-time comprises fractional units of resource-time;
• and
• means, including one or more processors, for processing the active reservations by assigning a free consumable resource to each task in the active reservations, wherein active reservations are processed in an order commensurate with the priority queue of the set of active reservations.