A method, computer program product, and a data processing system for scheduling instructions in a data processing system are provided. Dependencies among a plurality of nodes are analyzed to determine if any of the plurality of nodes uses a constrained resource. Each of the plurality of nodes represents an instruction in a set of instructions. A subset of the plurality of nodes is designated as resource-constrained nodes. An attempt is made to generate a schedule with the subset of the plurality of nodes scheduled with priority with respect to any of the plurality of nodes not included in the subset.