An asymptotically optimal online algorithm to minimize the total completion time on two multipurpose machines with unit processing times

Dvir Shabtay, Shlomo Karhi

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

7 Scopus citations

Abstract

In the majority of works on online scheduling on multipurpose machines the objective is to minimize the makespan. We, in contrast, consider the objective of minimizing the total completion time. For this purpose, we analyze an online-list scheduling problem of n jobs with unit processing times on a set of two machines working in parallel. Each job belongs to one of two sets of job types. Jobs belonging to the first set can be processed on either of the two machines while jobs belonging to the second set can only be processed on the second machine. We present an online algorithm with a competitive ratio of ρ LB+O(1/n), where ρ LB is a lower bound on the competitive ratio of any online algorithm and is equal to 1+(-α + √4α 32+2α-1/2α 2+1) 2 where α=1/3+1/6(116-6√78) 1/3+(58+3√78) 1/3/3(2) 2/3 ≈ 1.918. This result implies that our online algorithm is asymptotically optimal.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)241-248
Number of pages8
JournalDiscrete Optimization
Volume9
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Nov 2012

Keywords

  • Competitive ratio
  • Multipurpose machine scheduling
  • Online scheduling
  • Total completion time

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • Computational Theory and Mathematics
  • Applied Mathematics

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