ONLINE MINIMUM MAKESPAN SCHEDULING WITH A BUFFER.

In this paper we study an online minimum makespan scheduling problem with a reordering buffer. We obtain the following results: (i) for m > 51 identical machines, we give a 1.5-competitive online algorithm with a buffer of size ⌈1.5m⌉; (ii) for three identical machines, we give an optimal online algorithm with a buffer size six, better than the previous nine; (iii) for m uniform machines, using a buffer of size m, we improve the competitive ratio from 2 + ε to 2 − 1/m+ ε, where ε > 0 is sufficiently small and m is a constant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]