We consider the problem of uniformly distributing the load of a parallel program over a multiprocessor system. We analyze a program whose structure permits the computation of the optimal static solution. We then describe four strategies for load balancing and compare their performance. The four strategies are (1) the optimal static assignment algorithm which is guaranteed to yield the best static solution, (2) the static binary dissection method which is very fast but sub-optimal (3) the greedy

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... algorithm, a static fully polynomial time approximation scheme, which estimates the optimal solution to arbitrary accuracy and (4) the predictive dynamic load balancing heuristic which uses information on the precedence relationships within the program and outperforms any of the static methods. It is also shown that the overhead incurred by the dynamic heuristic (4) is reduced considerably if it is started off with a static assignment provided by either (1), (2) or (3).