A polynomial-time algorithm is presented for partitioning a collection of sporadic tasks among the processors of an identical multiprocessor platform. Since the partitioning problem is NP-hard in the strong sense, this algorithm is unlikely to be optimal. A quantitative characterization of its worst-case performance is provided in terms of resource augmentation: it is shown that any set of sporadic tasks that can be partitioned among the processors of an m-processor identical multiprocessor platform will be partitioned by this algorithm on an m-processor platform in which each processor is (4 − 2/m) times as fast.
Sanjoy K. Baruah, Nathan Fisher