End-to-end scheduling to meet deadlines in distributed systems

Algorithms for scheduling a class of systems in which all the tasks execute on different processors in turn in the same order are described. This end-to-end scheduling problem is known as the flow-shop problem. Two cases in which the problem is tractable are presented, and a heuristic for the NP-hard general case is evaluated. The traditional flow-shop model is generalized in two directions. First, an algorithm for scheduling flow shops in which tasks can be serviced more than once by some processors is presented. Second, a heuristic algorithm for scheduling flow shops with periodic tasks is described. Scheduling systems with more than one flow shop are considered.>