A transfer policy for global scheduling algorithms to schedule tasks with deadlines

The authors present a load index to characterize the system state that is more conducive to apply preventive and corrective measures, and a transfer policy which takes preventive measures by doing anticipatory task transfers in addition to corrective measures. Key features of this transfer policy are: (1) it is general and can be used in conjunction with a broad range of existing location policies, (2) it does not require the capability to transfer partially executed tasks, and (3) it adapts better to the system state by looking-ahead. A simulation study shows that an algorithm making use of the transfer policy and the load index reduces the number of deadline misses significantly when compared to algorithms taking only corrective measures.<<ETX>>