A note on scheduling with low rank processing times

Abstract

We consider the classical minimum makespan scheduling problem, where the processing time of job $j$ on machine $i$ is $p_{ij}$, and the matrix $P=(p_{ij})_{m\times n}$ is of a low rank. It is proved in (Bhaskara et al., SODA 2013) that rank 7 scheduling is NP-hard to approximate to a factor of $3/2-\epsilon$, and rank 4 scheduling is APX-hard (NP-hard to approximate within a factor of $1.03-\epsilon$). We improve this result by showing that rank 4 scheduling is already NP-hard to approximate within a factor of $3/2-\epsilon$, and meanwhile rank 3 scheduling is APX-hard.