REAL-time CONTEST: Registration Link
Join a Nice Scheduling programming contest organized by ETSI and INRIA at Sophia Antipolis - France on 27 November - 1st December 2006. Be prepared to beat other registered participants in real time. There are prices to win. Read the rules of the game.

To participate in the game and declare your interest (free), please send a mail to: El-ghazali.Talbi@lifl.fr, patrick.guillemin@etsi.org, plugtest@etsi.org with:

• The name of the group and each candidate willing to participate in the scheduling challenge
• The name of the responsible person (interlocutor and team representative)
• Your email contact

If you just want to play remotely without attending and discuss the challenge before taking part, you can subscribe to the related discussion list: PLUGTESTS-GRID@LIST.ETSI.ORG, in which case:

• Read the problem description.
• Send a mail to LISTSERV@LIST.ETSI.ORG with nothing in the subject and in the body of the message: SUB PLUGTESTS-GRID (firstname lastname)

Subscription to the list is free and is opened to people interested in this challenge and will be used to follow up the challenges.

C++ source code example for the permutation flowshop scheduling problem, along with a few benchmarks can be downloaded in TGZ format. The format used for benchmark files that can be found inside the archive, is not similar with the format used for the benchmarks that can be found on Taillard's site - although, please note, you may chose one of them at your own will.

The following should stand for a short description of the format used for the benchmark files found inside the archive:

• the first number is the number of jobs to schedule (N).
• the second number is the number of machines (M).
• the next numbers are the same for each job:
  • availability date of the job
  • due date of the job
  • scheduling time needed on each machine (M numbers)

Grid Users will try to beat in realtime others participants programs generating the best possible instance for the famous scheduling problem. A set of very well known benchmark files can be found on Taillard's site.

A results summary, for the proposed benchmarks, may be accessed on Taillard's page by following the next link - results summary. Also, some of the instances haven't been solved till this time, representing an extremely interesting point on the contest's list.