1. A method for evaluating the robustness of a list scheduling framework, the method comprising: identifying a set of compiler benchmarks known to be sensitive to an instruction scheduler; running the set of benchmarks against a heuristic under test, H and collect an execution time Exec(H[G]), where G is a directed a-cyclical graph; running the set of benchmarks against a plurality of random heuristics H rand [G] i , and collect a plurality of respective execution times Exec(H rand [G]) i ; computing a robustness of the list scheduling framework, where the robustness is given by: robustness H ( G ) = ∑ h rand ∈ H rand  Exec ( h rand [ G ] ) , Exec ( H [ G ] )  , and checking robustness check it against a pre-determined threshold.