Online variable-sized bin packing with conflicts

We study a new kind of online bin packing with conflicts, motivated by a problem arising when scheduling jobs on the Grid. In this bin packing problem, the set of items is given at the beginning, together with a set of conflicts on pairs of items. A conflict on a pair of items implies that they cannot be assigned to a common bin. The online scenario is realized as follows. Variable-sized bins arrive one by one, and items need to be assigned to each bin before the next bin arrives. We analyze the online problem as well as semi-online versions of it, which are the variant where the sizes of the arriving bills are monotonically non-increasing as well as the variant where they are monotonically non-decreasing. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.