A system and method for scheduling jobs in a multiprocessor machine is disclosed. The status of resources, including CPUs on node boards and associated shared memory in the multiprocessor machine is periodically determined. The status can indicate the resources available to execute jobs. This information is accumulated by the topology-monitoring unit and provided to the topology library. The topology library also receives a candidate host list from the scheduling unit which lists all of the resources available to execute the job being scheduled based on non-trivial scheduling. The topology library unit then uses this to generate a free map F indicative of the interconnection of the resources available to execute the job. The topology monitoring unit then matches the jobs to the resources available to execute the jobs, based on resource requirements including shape requirements indicative of interconnections of resources required to execute the job. The topology monitoring unit dispatches the job to the portion of the free map F which match the shape requirements of the job. If the topology library unit determines that no resources are available to execute the job, the topology library unit will return the job to the scheduling unit and the scheduling unit which will wait until the resources become available. The free map F may include resources which have been suspended or reserved in previous scheduling cycles, provided the job to be scheduled satisfies the predetermined criteria for execution of the job on the suspended, have a lower priority, or are reserved resources.