Stochastic dispatching of multi-priority jobs to heterogeneous processors

Abstract

A number of multi-priority jobs are to be processed on two heterogeneous processors. Of the jobs waiting in the buffer, jobs with the highest priority have the first option of being dispatched for processing when a processor becomes available. On each processor, the processing times of the jobs within each priority class are stochastic, but have known distributions with decreasing mean residual (remaining) processing times. Processors are heterogeneous in the sense that, for each priority class, one has a lesser average processing time than the other. It is shown that the non-preemptive scheduling strategy for each priority class to minimize its expected flowtime is of threshold type. For each class, the threshold values, which specify when the slower processor is utilized, may be readily computed. It is also shown that the social and the individual optimality coincide.