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Approximation in Preemptive Stochastic Online Scheduling

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Algorithms – ESA 2006 (ESA 2006)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 4168))

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Abstract

We present a first constant performance guarantee for preemptive stochastic scheduling to minimize the sum of weighted completion times. For scheduling jobs with release dates on identical parallel machines we derive a policy with a guaranteed performance ratio of 2 which matches the currently best known result for the corresponding deterministic online problem.

Our policy applies to the recently introduced stochastic online scheduling model in which jobs arrive online over time. In contrast to the previously considered nonpreemptive setting, our preemptive policy extensively utilizes information on processing time distributions other than the first (and second) moments. In order to derive our result we introduce a new nontrivial lower bound on the expected value of an unknown optimal policy that we derive from an optimal policy for the basic problem on a single machine without release dates. This problem is known to be solved optimally by a Gittins index priority rule. This priority index also inspires the design of our policy.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Technische Universität Berlin, Institut für Mathematik, Strasse des 17. Juni 136, 10623, Berlin, Germany

    Nicole Megow

  2. Department of Quantitative Economics, Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200, MD Maastricht, The Netherlands

    Tjark Vredeveld

Authors
  1. Nicole Megow
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  2. Tjark Vredeveld
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Microsoft Research, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052, USA and School of Computer Science, Tel-Aviv University, 69978, Tel-Aviv, Israel

    Yossi Azar

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Leicester, University Road, LE1 7RH, Leicester, UK

    Thomas Erlebach

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© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Megow, N., Vredeveld, T. (2006). Approximation in Preemptive Stochastic Online Scheduling. In: Azar, Y., Erlebach, T. (eds) Algorithms – ESA 2006. ESA 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4168. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11841036_47

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11841036_47

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-38875-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-38876-0

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