Research Article

Scheduling chains on uniform processors with communication delays

  1. Wieslaw Kubiak11,*,
  2. Bernard Penz2,
  3. Denis Trystram3

Article first published online: 7 NOV 2002

DOI: 10.1002/jos.121

Issue

Journal of Scheduling

Journal of Scheduling

Special Issue: Special Issue of Selected Papers from the Dagstuhl Workshop on Scheduling in Computer and Manufacturing Systems

Volume 5, Issue 6, pages 459–476, November/December 2002

Additional Information

How to Cite

Kubiak1, W., Penz, B. and Trystram, D. (2002), Scheduling chains on uniform processors with communication delays. J. Sched., 5: 459–476. doi: 10.1002/jos.121

Author Information

  1. 1

    Memorial University of Newfoundland, Faculty of Business Administration, St John's Newfoundland A1B 3X5, Canada

  2. 2

    GILCO, ENSGI-INPG, 46 avenue F. Viallet 38031 Grenoble Cedex 1, France

  3. 3

    ID-IMAG, ENSIMAG - antenne de Montbonnot ZIRST 51, avenue Jean Kuntzmann 38330 Montbonnot Saint Martin, France

*Memorial University of Newfoundland, Faculty of Business Administration, St John's Newfoundland A1B 3X5, Canada

Publication History

  1. Issue published online: 7 NOV 2002
  2. Article first published online: 7 NOV 2002

Funded by

  • NSERC. Grant Number: OGP0105675
  • Fondation Scientifique de Lyon et du Sud-Est

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Keywords:

  • scheduling;
  • chains;
  • uniform processors;
  • communication delays

Abstract

We show that the problem of scheduling chains of unit execution time (UET) jobs on uniform processors with communication delays to minimize makespan is NP-hard in the strong sense. We also give a heuristic that generates solutions with known, and relatively small, absolute error for this problem. The NP-hardness result holds even for the case without communication delays, and complements the earlier result of Gonzalez and Sahni who gave a polynomial time algorithm for preemptive jobs of arbitrary length.

We also study the structure of optimal solutions for the two processor problem of scheduling chains of UET jobs with communication delays, where one processor is a (integer) times faster than the other. This investigation leads to a linear time optimization algorithm for this case. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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