Macro pipelining based scheduling on high performance heterogeneous multiprocessor systems

Presents a technique for pipelining heterogeneous multiprocessor systems, macro pipelining based scheduling. The problem can be identified as a combination of optimal task/processor assignment to pipeline stages as well as a scheduling problem. The authors propose a new technique based on iterative applications of partitioning and scheduling schemes whereby the number of pipeline stages are identified and the scheduling problem is solved. The pipeline cycle is optimized in two steps. The first step finds a global coarse solution using the ratio cut partitioning technique. This is subsequently improved by the iterative architecture driven partitioning and the repartitioning and time axis relabeling techniques of the second step. The authors have considered a linear interprocessor communication cost model in scheduling. The proposed technique is applied to several examples. They find that for these examples, the proposed macro pipelining based scheduling can improve the throughput rate several times that of the conventional homogeneous multiprocessor scheduling algorithms. >