Tabu search for multiprocessor scheduling: Application to high level synthesis

Abstract

This paper describes a tabu search approach for a multiprocessor scheduling problem, where a list of jobs has to be scheduled on identical parallel processors. Each job in the list has a release date, a due date, a processing time and a set of predecessors. The objective is to minimize the number of processors used while respecting the constraints imposed by release dates, due dates and precedences. Two versions of this problem are considered here, in the first one precedence constraints are relaxed, they are taken into account in the second one. The proposed method is used to solve High Level Synthesis problem instances. The results show the effectiveness of our approach for both versions of the problem. A comparison with an exact method is also conducted. © 2011 World Scientific Publishing Co. & Operational Research Society of Singapore.