Affinity dispatching load balancer with precise CPU consumption data

A system for distributing a plurality of tasks over a plurality of nodes in a network includes: a plurality of processors for executing tasks; a plurality of nodes comprising processors; a task dispatcher; and a load balancer. The task dispatcher receives as input the plurality of tasks; calculates a task processor consumption value for the tasks; calculates a node processor consumption value for the nodes; calculates a target node processor consumption value for the nodes; and then calculates a load index value as a difference between the calculated node processor consumption for a node i and the target node processor consumption value for the node i. The balancer distributes the tasks among the nodes to balance the processor workload among the nodes according to the calculated load index value of each node, such that the calculated load index value of each node is substantially zero.