Scheduling Algorithms

Introduction Scheduling theory is concerned with the optimal allocation of scarce resources to activities over time. The practice of this field dates to the first time two humans contended for a shared resource and developed a plan to share it without bloodshed. The theory of the design of algorithms for scheduling is younger, but still has a significant history---the earliest papers in the field were published more than forty years ago. Scheduling problems arise in a variety of settings, as is illustrated by the following examples: Example 1: Consider the central processing unit of a computer that must process a sequence of jobs that arrive over time. In what order should the jobs be processed in order to minimize, on average, the time that a job is in the system from arrival to completion? Example 2: Consider a team of five astronauts preparing for the reentry of their space shuttle into the at