Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10553/72704
Title: Predictable performance in SMT processors
Authors: Cazorla, Francisco J.
Fernández, Enrique 
Knijnenburg, Peter M.W.
Ramirez, Alex
Sakellariou, Rizos
Valero, Mateo
UNESCO Clasification: 3304 Tecnología de los ordenadores
330412 Dispositivos de control
Keywords: Ilp
Multithreading
Operating systems
Performance predictability
Real time, et al
Issue Date: 2004
Conference: 2004 Computing Frontiers Conference 
Abstract: Current instruction fetch policies in SMT processors are oriented towards optimization of overall throughput and/or fairness. However, they provide no control over how individual threads are executed, leading to performance unpredictability, since the IPC of a thread depends on the workload it is executed in and on the fetch policy used. From the point of view of the Operating System (OS), it is the job scheduler that determines how jobs are executed. However, when the OS runs on an SMT processor, the job scheduler cannot guarantee execution time constraints of any job due to this performance unpredictability. In this paper we propose a novel kind of collaboration between the OS and the SMT hardware that enables the OS to enforce that a high priority thread runs at a specific fraction of its full speed. We present an extensive evaluation using many different workloads, that shows that this mechanism gives the required performance in more than 97% of all cases considered, and even more than 99% for the less extreme cases. At the same time, our mechanism does not need to trade off predictability against overall throughput, as it maximizes the IPC of the remaining low priority threads, giving 94% on average (and 97.5% on average for the less extreme cases) of the throughput obtained using instruction fetch policies oriented toward throughput maximization, such as icount.
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10553/72704
ISBN: 1-58113-741-9
DOI: 10.1145/977091.977152
Source: 2004 Proceedings of the First Computing Frontiers Conference on Computing Frontiers, p. 433-443, (Agosto 2004)
Appears in Collections:Actas de congresos
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