A self-organized allocation scheme for service tasks in computing systems is proposed in this paper. Usually components of a computing system need some service from time to time in order perform their work efficiently. In adaptive computing systems the components and the necessary tasks adapt to the needs of users or the environment. Since in such cases the type of service tasks will often change it is attractive to use reconfigurable hardware to perform the service tasks. The studied system

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... sists of normal worker components and helper components which have reconfigurable hardware and can perform different service tasks. The speed with which a service tasks is executed by a helper depends on its actual configuration. Different strategies for the helpers to decide about service task acceptance and reconfiguration are proposed. These strategies are inspired by stimulus-threshold models that are used to explain task allocation in social insects. 1-4244-0054-6/06/$20.00 ©2006 IEEE The communication costs ω are f 1 (s 1 )) ). The communication cost consists of the costs for the first communication for each request plus the costs for the second communication that is necessary when a request was rejected. The total execution and communication times C for all tasks is C = e 1 + e 2 + ω. In order to find an optimal (with respect to minimal total execution and communication costs) degree of specialization