Operating system multilevel load balancing

This paper describes an algorithm that allows Linux to perform multilevel load balancing in NUMA computers. The Linux scheduler implements a load balancing algorithm that uses structures called sched domains to build a hierarchy that represents the machine’s topology. Although sched domains implementation allows Linux to build a multilevel hierarchy to represent multilevel machines, the generic code of the current kernel version builds no more than two levels in the sched domains hierarchy. Thus, for NUMA systems with three or more memory access levels, the constructed hierarchy does not represent correctly the machine’s topology. When Linux load balancing algorithm uses an incorrect sched domains hierarchy, process execution time can increase, because processes can be moved to nodes that are distant from their memory areas. In order to solve this problem, we have implemented an algorithm to build multilevel sched domains hierarchies for NUMA computers. Our proposed algorithm uses...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: SAC
• Authors: Mônica Corrêa, Avelino Francisco Zorzo, Roque Scheer
• Keywords: Applied Computing, Load Balancing, Load Balancing Algorithm, SAC 2006, Sched Domains