BIB-VERSION:: CS-TR-v2.0
          ID:: STAN//CSL-TR-94-601
       ENTRY:: March 21, 1994
ORGANIZATION:: Stanford University, Computer Systems Laboratory.
       TITLE:: Efficient Scheduling on Multiprogrammed Shared-Memory
               Multiprocessors
        TYPE:: Thesis
        TYPE:: Technical Report
      AUTHOR:: Tucker, Andrew
       PAGES:: 98
    ABSTRACT:: Shared-memory multiprocessors are often used as compute
               servers, with multiple users running applications in a
               multiprogrammed style. On such systems, naive time-sharing
               scheduling policies can result in poor performance for
               parallel applications. Most parallel applications are written
               with the model of a stable computing environment, where
               applications are running uninterrupted on a fixed number of
               processors. On a time-sharing system, processes are
               interrupted periodically and the number of processors running
               an application continually varies. The result is an decrease
               in performance for a number of reasons, including processes
               being obliviously preempted inside critical sections and
               cached data being replaced by intervening processes.
 
               This thesis explores using more sophisticated scheduling
               systems to avoid these problems. Robust implementations of
               previously proposed approaches involving cache affinity
               scheduling and gang scheduling are developed and evaluated.
               It then presents the design, implementation, and performance
               of process control, a novel scheduling approach using
               explicit cooperation between the application and kernel to
               minimize context switching. Performance results from a suite
               of workloads containing both serial and parallel
               applications, run on a 4-processor Silicon Graphics
               workstation, confirm the effectiveness of the process control
               approach.
       NOTES:: Also published as CS-TN-94-4 by Stanford University,
               Department of Computer Science.
               [Adminitrivia V2/ACK/19940321 Changed the ID from
               CS-TN-94-5 to CSL-TR-94-614 and added Also published note.]
               [Adminitrivia V1/Prg/19940310]
         END:: STAN//CSL-TR-94-601