Optimal scheduling algorithm for distributed-memory machines

Task Scheduling is one of the key elements in any distributed-memory machine (DMM), and an efficient algorithm can help reduce the interprocessor communication time. As optimal scheduling of tasks to DMMs is a strong NP-hard problem, many heuristic algorithms have been introduced in the literature. This paper presents a Task Duplication based Scheduling (TDS) algorithm which can schedule directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) with a complexity of O(|V|/sup 2/), where |V| is the number of tasks in the DAG. This algorithm generates an optimal schedule for a class of DAGs which satisfy a simple cost relationship. The performance of the algorithm has been observed by its application to some practical DAGs, and by comparing it with other existing scheduling schemes in terms of the schedule length and algorithm complexity.