Competitive on-line scheduling of imprecise computations

The on-line scheduling of systems of imprecise computation tasks is investigated. The system objective is to maximize the value obtained. A formal model is defined. Under certain reasonable assumptions-formalized here as the weak feasible mandatory constraint-a competitive on-line scheduling algorithm is presented for the commonly studied uniform-density task systems. It is proven, however, that an on-line algorithm may, in general, perform arbitrarily poorly as compared to a clairvoyant scheduler.