Online scheduling of jobs with fixed start times on related machines

Leah Epstein, Łukasz Jez, Jiří Sgall, Rob Van Stee

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

We consider online preemptive scheduling of jobs with fixed starting times revealed at those times on m uniformly related machines, with the goal of maximizing the total weight of completed jobs. Every job has a size and a weight associated with it. A newly released job must be either assigned to start running immediately on a machine or otherwise it is dropped. It is also possible to drop an already scheduled job, but only completed jobs contribute their weights to the profit of the algorithm. In the most general setting, no algorithm has bounded competitive ratio, and we consider a number of standard variants. We give a full classification of the variants into cases which admit constant competitive ratio (weighted and unweighted unit jobs, and C-benevolent instances, which is a wide class of instances containing proportional-weight jobs), and cases which admit only a linear competitive ratio (unweighted jobs and D-benevolent instances). In particular, we give a lower bound of m on the competitive ratio for scheduling unit weight jobs with varying sizes, which is tight. For unit size and weight we show that a natural greedy algorithm is 4/3-competitive and optimal on m = 2 machines, while for a large m, its competitive ratio is between 1.56 and 2. Furthermore, no algorithm is better than 1.5-competitive.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationApproximation, Randomization, and Combinatorial Optimization
Subtitle of host publicationAlgorithms and Techniques - 15th International Workshop, APPROX 2012, and 16th International Workshop, RANDOM 2012, Proceedings
Pages134-145
Number of pages12
DOIs
StatePublished - 2012
Event15th International Workshop on Approximation Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization Problems, APPROX 2012 and the 16th International Workshop on Randomization and Computation, RANDOM 2012 - Cambridge, MA, United States
Duration: 15 Aug 201217 Aug 2012

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume7408 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference15th International Workshop on Approximation Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization Problems, APPROX 2012 and the 16th International Workshop on Randomization and Computation, RANDOM 2012
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityCambridge, MA
Period15/08/1217/08/12

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Online scheduling of jobs with fixed start times on related machines'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this