A close look at task assignment in distributed systems

C. C. Shen and W. H. Tsai (IEEE Trans. Comput., vol.C-34, no.3, p.197-203 1985) proposed a graph matching algorithm for solving the static task assignment problem. It combines two important ideas: (1) graph homomorphism and (2) application of the A* algorithm. Task-dependent information is used as a heuristic to reduce the search effort in finding an optimal path to the goal node. An examination is made of Shen and Tsai's strategy and their complexity measure. The authors propose some simple alternatives to their algorithm that are effective in reducing the number of nodes generated (and expanded) without sacrificing the optimality criteria.<
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