Video signal processor scheduling

We consider the problem of scheduling video algorithms onto systems of high-performance video signal processors with hard real-time constraints. We present a compact mathematical formulation which identifies the decision variables and the constraints that are involved. We demonstrate that the scheduling problem is NP-hard in the strong sense. The insight resulting from the mathematical formulation leads to a solution approach in which the problem is decomposed into a time assignment problem and a resource assignment problem. These subproblems are handled with well-known combinatorial optimization techniques from the literature such as shortest paths and graph colouring. The results indicate that the proposed solution approach effectively and efficiently schedules hundreds of operations onto tens of processing elements. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.