Gearman

Gearman is an open-source application framework designed to distribute appropriate computer tasks to multiple computers, so large tasks can be done more quickly. In some cases, load balancing rather than raw speed may be the main goal; a Web server, for instance, could use Gearman to send tasks for which it is not optimized to another computer (which may be running on a different architecture, using another operating system, or loaded with a computer language better suited to a particular operation).

It was originally written in Perl by Brad Fitzpatrick. Brian Aker and Eric Day rewrote the framework in C.