[arcanus]

Weird. No one else would want a scheduler to be FIFO, either. Rather, the actual optimization that is performed by slurm, pbs, etc. under the hood is pretty interesting.

The point of schedulers is much more complicated than a straightforward queue, as they seek to project how best to utilize system resources into the future.

Strange he would be so pedantic. Everyone in HPC certainly does call it a queue, as you noted.

[dekhn]

Common problem with programmers: when they learn a term means something, they associate that term absolutely with that meaning (common in other fields with people who are highly analytical, IME).

The HPC people are referring to a "job queue", rather than a "ADT queue". Those are distinct things, the ADT queue is a much more restrictive defintion, but it's not an exclusive one. HPC queues are more like priority queues with complex ranking functions (and queues of queues), just like real-life queues where people can cut by paying more money (first class airline ticket).

[conjectures]

Yeah, because it is a queue in the ordinary English sense.