A semi on-line algorithm for the partition problem.

The distribution of jobs in a system with m identical parallel processors which minimises the load of the maximally loaded processor is an NP-hard problem. Many approximate algorithms are developed for this problem, but for the version of the problem where the jobs arrive ad must be treated on-line there is no algorithm possessing the guaranteed estimate which is less than 1 + 1 / ... for m ≥ 4 and tends to 1.837 as m → ∞. In this paper, we consider the version of the problem where jobs arrive one by one and must be treated on-line under the additional condition that the total duration of the jobs is known. For this version of the problem we suggest an algorithm with the guaranteed estimate equal to 5/3. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]