A Machine Learning Based Meta-Scheduler for Multi-Core Processors

Sharing resources such as caches and memory buses between the cores of multi-core processors may cause performance bottlenecks for running programs. In this paper, the authors describe a meta-scheduler, which adapts the process scheduling decisions for reducing the contention for shared L2 caches on multi-core processors. The meta-scheduler takes into account the multi-core topology as well as the L2 cache related characteristics of the processes. Using the model generated by the process of machine learning, it predicts the L2 cache behavior, i.e., solo-run-L2-cache-stress, of the programs. It runs in user mode and guides the underlying operating system process scheduler in intelligent scheduling of processes to reduce the contention of shared L2 caches. In these experiments, the authors observed up to 12 percent speedup in individual as well as overall performance, while using meta-scheduler as compared to default process scheduler (Completely Fair Scheduler) of Linux kernel.