• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.293-307
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• 2004

We consider the problem of scheduling tasks of a precedence constrained task graph, where each task has its execution time and deadline, onto a set of identical processors in a way that simultaneously minimizes the number of processors required and the total tardiness of tasks. Most existing approaches tend to focus on the minimization of the total tardiness of tasks. In another methods, solutions to this problem are usually computed by combining the two objectives into a simple criterion to be optimized. In this paper, the minimization is carried out using a multiobjective genetic algorithm (GA) that independently considers both criteria by using a vector-valued cost function. We present various GA components that are well suited to the problem of task scheduling, such as a non-trivial encoding strategy. a domination-based selection operator, and a heuristic crossover operator We also provide three local improvement heuristics that facilitate the fast convergence of GA's. The experimental results showed that when compared to five methods used previously, such as list-scheduling algorithms and a specific genetic algorithm, the Performance of our algorithm was comparable or better for 178 out of 180 randomly generated task graphs.