Optimal Allocation of Tasks onto Networked Heterogeneous Computers Using Minimax Criterion

Advances in microprocessors and computer networks have made distributed systems reality. However, exploiting the full potential of these systems requires efficient allocation of tasks comprising a distributed application to the available processors of the systems. This problem is known to be NP-hard and therefore untractable as soon as the number of tasks and/or processors exceeds a few units. This paper presents an optimal, memory efficient, algorithm for allocating an application program onto processors of a distributed system to minimize the program completion time. The algorithm derived from the well known Branch-and-Bound with some modifications to minimize its computational time. Some experimental results are given to show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.