Minimizing total busy time in parallel scheduling with application to optical networks

—We consider a scheduling problem in which a bounded number of jobs can be processed simultaneously by a single machine. The input is a set of n jobs J = {J1, . . . , Jn}. Each job, Jj, is associated with an interval [sj, cj] along which it should be processed. Also given is the parallelism parameter g ≥ 1, which is the maximal number of jobs that can be processed simultaneously by a single machine. Each machine operates along a contiguous time interval, called its busy interval, which contains all the intervals corresponding to the jobs it processes. The goal is to assign the jobs to machines such that the total busy time of the machines is minimized. The problem is known to be NP-hard already for g = 2. We present a 4-approximation algorithm for general instances, and approximation algorithms with Research supported in part by the Frucht fund for electrooptics research at the Technion and by the EU COST 293 (GRAAL) research fund improved ratios for instances with bounded lengths,...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: IPPS
• Authors: Michele Flammini, Gianpiero Monaco, Luca Moscardelli, Hadas Shachnai, Mordechai Shalom, Tami Tamir, Shmuel Zaks
• Keywords: Busy Interval, Distributed And Parallel Computing, IPPS 2009, Single Machine, Total Busy Time