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Reducing performance non-determinism via cache-aware page allocation strategies

Hocko, Michal and Kalibera, Tomas (2010) Reducing performance non-determinism via cache-aware page allocation strategies. In: WOSP/SIPEW '10 Proceedings of the first joint WOSP/SIPEW international conference on Performance engineering. ICPE ACM/SPEC International Conference on Performance Engineering . ACM, New York, USA, pp. 182-196. ISBN 978-1-60558-563-5. (doi:10.1145/1712605.1712640) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:30695)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1712605.1712640

Abstract

Performance non-determinism in computer systems complicates evaluation, use, and even development of these systems. In performance evaluation via benchmarking and simulation, non-determinism requires long executions and more complex experiment design. Real-time systems are hard to dimension and tune with non-determinism. The slower benchmarking also slows down system development, as it takes developers longer to see performance implications of their modifications. Cache-unaware physical page allocation in an operating system is believed to be a significant cause of non-determinism, but there is no published empirical study that would confirm it. We provide such a study for the Linux operating system, comparing the default cache-unaware page allocation strategy to known cache-aware strategies, page coloring and bin hopping. We have implemented a framework for page allocation strategies in the Linux kernel, employed it for these two strategies, and measured the non-determinism on a large and diverse set of benchmarks. We propose a statistical technique which allows to classify different kinds of performance non-determinism and evaluate their magnitudes. Application of our technique reveals that the two strategies do reduce performance non-determinism without significantly increasing mean response time.

Item Type: Book section
DOI/Identification number: 10.1145/1712605.1712640
Uncontrolled keywords: determinacy analysis, Craig interpolants
Subjects: Q Science > QA Mathematics (inc Computing science) > QA 76 Software, computer programming,
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences > School of Computing
Depositing User: Tomas Kalibera
Date Deposited: 21 Sep 2012 09:49 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:08 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/30695 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Kalibera, Tomas.

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