research-article

Virtualizing performance asymmetric multi-core systems

Authors:

Seungryoul Maeng,

Jaehyuk HuhAuthors Info & Claims

ISCA '11: Proceedings of the 38th annual international symposium on Computer architecture

Pages 45 - 56

https://doi.org/10.1145/2000064.2000071

Published: 04 June 2011 Publication History

Abstract

Performance-asymmetric multi-cores consist of heterogeneous cores, which support the same ISA, but have different computing capabilities. To maximize the throughput of asymmetric multi-core systems, operating systems are responsible for scheduling threads to different types of cores. However, system virtualization poses a challenge for such asymmetric multi-cores, since virtualization hides the physical heterogeneity from guest operating systems. In this paper, we explore the design space of hypervisor schedulers for asymmetric multi-cores, which do not require asymmetry-awareness from guest operating systems. The proposed scheduler characterizes the efficiency of each virtual core, and map the virtual core to the most area-efficient physical core. In addition to the overall system throughput, we consider two important aspects of virtualizing asymmetric multi-cores: performance fairness among virtual machines and performance scalability for changing availability of fast and slow cores.

We have implemented an asymmetry-aware scheduler in the open-source Xen hypervisor. Using applications with various characteristics, we evaluate how effectively the proposed scheduler can improve system throughput without asymmetry-aware operating systems. The modified scheduler improves the performance of the Xen credit scheduler by as much as 40% on a 12-core system with four fast and eight slow cores. The results show that even the VMs scheduled to slow cores have relatively low performance degradations, and the scheduler provides scalable performance with increasing fast core counts.

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Cited By

Hwang EKim JChoi Y(2021)Achieving Fairness-Aware Two-Level Scheduling for Heterogeneous Distributed SystemsIEEE Transactions on Services Computing10.1109/TSC.2018.283644414:3(639-653)Online publication date: 1-May-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSC.2018.2836444
Woolley BMengel SErtas A(2020)An Evolutionary Approach for the Hierarchical Scheduling of Safety- and Security-Critical Multicore ArchitecturesComputers10.3390/computers90300719:3(71)Online publication date: 3-Sep-2020
https://doi.org/10.3390/computers9030071
Kim CHuh J(2018)Exploring the Design Space of Fair Scheduling Supports for Asymmetric Multicore SystemsIEEE Transactions on Computers10.1109/TC.2018.2796077(1-1)Online publication date: 2018
https://doi.org/10.1109/TC.2018.2796077
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Virtualizing performance asymmetric multi-core systems
1. Computer systems organization
  1. Architectures
    1. Parallel architectures
      1. Multiple instruction, multiple data
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software organization and properties
    1. Contextual software domains
      1. Operating systems
        Process management

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

ISCA '11: Proceedings of the 38th annual international symposium on Computer architecture

June 2011

488 pages

ISBN:9781450304726

DOI:10.1145/2000064

General Chairs:
Ravi Iyer
Intel
,
Qing Yang
University of Rhode Island
,
Program Chair:
Antonio González
Intel and UPC

ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News Volume 39, Issue 3
ISCA '11
June 2011
462 pages
ISSN:0163-5964
DOI:10.1145/2024723
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2011 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 04 June 2011

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ISCA '11

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ISCA '11: The 38th Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture

June 4 - 8, 2011

California, San Jose, USA

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Overall Acceptance Rate 543 of 3,203 submissions, 17%

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The 52nd Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture

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Cited By

Hwang EKim JChoi Y(2021)Achieving Fairness-Aware Two-Level Scheduling for Heterogeneous Distributed SystemsIEEE Transactions on Services Computing10.1109/TSC.2018.283644414:3(639-653)Online publication date: 1-May-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSC.2018.2836444
Woolley BMengel SErtas A(2020)An Evolutionary Approach for the Hierarchical Scheduling of Safety- and Security-Critical Multicore ArchitecturesComputers10.3390/computers90300719:3(71)Online publication date: 3-Sep-2020
https://doi.org/10.3390/computers9030071
Kim CHuh J(2018)Exploring the Design Space of Fair Scheduling Supports for Asymmetric Multicore SystemsIEEE Transactions on Computers10.1109/TC.2018.2796077(1-1)Online publication date: 2018
https://doi.org/10.1109/TC.2018.2796077
Oi HNiboshi S(2017)Power Efficiency Study Using SPECjEnterprise2010IEEE Systems Journal10.1109/JSYST.2015.247179811:3(1867-1876)Online publication date: Sep-2017
https://doi.org/10.1109/JSYST.2015.2471798
Teabe BWapet PTchana AHagimont D(2017)Dealing with Performance Unpredictability in an Asymmetric Multicore Processor CloudEuro-Par 2017: Parallel Processing10.1007/978-3-319-64203-1_24(332-344)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2017
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64203-1_24
Kim CHuh J(2016)Fairness-oriented OS Scheduling Support for Multicore SystemsProceedings of the 2016 International Conference on Supercomputing10.1145/2925426.2926262(1-12)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2925426.2926262
Mittal S(2016)A Survey of Techniques for Architecting and Managing Asymmetric Multicore ProcessorsACM Computing Surveys10.1145/285612548:3(1-38)Online publication date: 8-Feb-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2856125
Hwang EKim SYoo TKim JHwang SChoi Y(2016)Resource Allocation Policies for Loosely Coupled Applications in Heterogeneous Computing SystemsIEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems10.1109/TPDS.2015.246115427:8(2349-2362)Online publication date: 13-Jul-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TPDS.2015.2461154
Lukefahr APadmanabha SDas RSleiman FDreslinski RWenisch TMahlke S(2016)Exploring Fine-Grained Heterogeneity with Composite CoresIEEE Transactions on Computers10.1109/TC.2015.241966965:2(535-547)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TC.2015.2419669
Ma JYan GHan YLi X(2016)An Analytical Framework for Estimating Scale-Out and Scale-Up Power Efficiency of Heterogeneous ManycoresIEEE Transactions on Computers10.1109/TC.2015.241965565:2(367-381)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TC.2015.2419655
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