Improved Algorithms for Online Scheduling of Malleable Parallel Jobs on Two Identical Machines

Abstract

This paper addresses online scheduling of malleable parallel jobs to minimize the maximum completion time, i.e., makespan. It is assumed that the execution time of a job Jj with processing time pj is pj/k + (k-1)c if the job is assigned to k machines, where c > 0 is a constant setup time. We consider online algorithms for the scheduling problem on two identical machines. Namely, the job Jj can be processed on one machine with execution time pj or alternatively two machines in parallel with execution time pj/2+c. For the asymptotical competitive ratio, we provide an improved online algorithm with makespan no more than (3/2)C* +c/2, where C* is the optimal makespan. For the strict competitive ratio, we propose an online algorithm with competitive ratio of 1.54, which is close to the lower bound of 1.5.