An Application of Vertex Partition for Parallel Test Tasks Scheduling in Automatic Test System

Emergency of automatic test system (ATS) aims to increase efficiency of software development. However, traditional testing skill in ATS is low efficiency when it faces large scale testing tasks. Therefore, parallel test becomes one kind of proper way to use system resources efficiently. Nevertheless, parallel testing task scheduling problem (PTTSP) is a complicated issue. Additionally, when system processes its scheduling it also have to concern time precedence constraints between testing tasks. Therefore, in this paper, we propose an algorithm--vertex partition algorithm derived from graph theory. It coordinates system resources conflicts (SRC) and time precedence constraints (TPC) in testing tasks. From experimental simulation, it shows that VPA approach is meaningful for design of scheduling strategy of ATS.