Using OS Observations to Improve Performance in Multicore Systems

Today's operating systems don't adequately handle the complexities of Multicore processors. Architectural features confound existing OS techniques for task scheduling, load balancing, and power management. This article shows that the OS can use data obtained from dynamic runtime observation of task behavior to ameliorate performance variability and more effectively exploit multicore processor resources. The authors' research prototypes demonstrate the utility of observation-based policy.