Multi-criteria scheduling of pipeline workflows

TL;DR

This paper investigates the complex problem of optimally mapping pipeline workflows onto parallel platforms considering multiple criteria like throughput and latency, demonstrating NP-hardness and proposing effective heuristics.

Contribution

It analyzes the bi-criteria scheduling problem for pipeline graphs, proves its NP-hardness, and introduces efficient heuristics with performance evaluation.

Findings

NP-hardness of the chains-to-chains problem for different-speed processors

Development of polynomial bi-criteria heuristics

Extensive simulation-based performance assessment

Abstract

Mapping workflow applications onto parallel platforms is a challenging problem, even for simple application patterns such as pipeline graphs. Several antagonist criteria should be optimized, such as throughput and latency (or a combination). In this paper, we study the complexity of the bi-criteria mapping problem for pipeline graphs on communication homogeneous platforms. In particular, we assess the complexity of the well-known chains-to-chains problem for different-speed processors, which turns out to be NP-hard. We provide several efficient polynomial bi-criteria heuristics, and their relative performance is evaluated through extensive simulations.