USRA - Levent Tuncel

Tuesday, June 14, 2016 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm EDT (GMT -04:00)

Title: Coffman-Sethi conjecture in multiprocessor scheduling

Speaker: Levent Tuncel
Affiliation: University of Waterl
Room MC 6486

Abstract:
Ron Graham's work, during the late 1960s, on proving that LPT (Longest Processing Time) list scheduling algorithm has the worst-case approximation ratio of precisely 4/3-1/(3m) (where m is the number of machines) has been inspirational in the areas of approximation algorithms
as well as in scheduling theory. Inspired by this work, Co man and Sethi proposed an extension of this algorithm for a refinement of the underlying problem and a conjecture on its worst-case approximation ratio: (5m-2)/(4m-1), in 1976. This conjecture stayed open for 39 years. In this talk, I will discuss a proof of this conjecture. Our proof of the conjecture designs and uses techniques somewhat analogous to those used in (graph minors based) structural graph theory.

This talk is based on two joint papers: one with M. Huang and P. Ravi (2013) and the other with P. Ravi (2015).