A generalized critical task anticipation technique for DAG scheduling

Abstract

The problem of scheduling a weighted directed acyclic graph (DAG) representing an application to a set of heterogeneous processors to minimize the completion time has been recently studied. The NP-completeness of the problem has instigated researchers to propose different heuristic algorithms. In this paper, we present a Generalized Critical-task Anticipation (GCA) algorithm for DAG scheduling in heterogeneous computing environment. The GCA scheduling algorithm employs task prioritizing technique based on CA algorithm and introduces a new processor selection scheme by considering heterogeneous communication costs among processors for adapting grid and scalable computing. To evaluate the performance of the proposed technique, we have developed a simulator that contains a parametric graph generator for generating weighted directed acyclic graphs with various characteristics. We have implemented the GCA algorithm along with the CA and HEFT scheduling algorithms on the simulator. The GCA algorithm is shown to be effective in terms of speedup and low scheduling costs. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.