An effective scheduling algorithm for homogeneous system

Efficient application scheduling is critical for achieving high performance in homogeneous computing environment. The application scheduling problem has been shown to be NP-complete. However, because of its key importance, this problem has been extensively studied and various algorithms have been proposed in the literatures. In this paper we present a novel algorithm based on list-scheduling and taskduplication on a bounded number of fully connected homogeneous machines. The algorithm is called Fast Duplication based on Earliest Finish Time (FDEFT). In order to provide a robust and unbiased comparison with the related work, a parametric graph generator was designed to generate weighted directed acyclic graphs with various characteristics. The comparison study, based on both randomly generated graphs and the graphs of Gaussian Elimination, shows that our scheduling algorithm significantly outperform on average all other excellent algorithms.