Roughly described, a task control system for managing multi-scale simulations receives a case/task list which identifies cases to be evaluated, at least one task for each of the cases, and dependencies among the tasks. A module allocates available processor cores to at least some of the tasks, constrained by the dependencies, and initiates execution of the tasks on allocated cores. A module, in response to completion of a particular one of the tasks, determines whether or not the result of the task warrants stopping or pruning tasks, and if so, then terminates or prunes one or more of the uncompleted tasks in the case/task list. A module also re-allocates available processor cores to pending not-yet-executing tasks in accordance with time required to complete the tasks and constrained by the dependencies, and initiates execution of the tasks on allocated cores.