Operating system support for asymmetric multi-core architectures

McIlroy, R., Dickman, P. and Sventek, J. (2007) Operating system support for asymmetric multi-core architectures. In: EuroSys2007, Lisbon, Portugal, 21-23 Mar 2007,

Abstract

As transistor densities increase, it is becoming ever more difficult to gain significant performance improvements in single processing core architectures therefore, processor designers are turning to multi-core processing architectures to increase overall performance. Several new architectures consist of multiple different processing cores, each specialised to a particular purpose. These asymmetric multi-core architectures can achieve significant performance and energy saving advantages, however, they are notoriously diffi- cult to program. We present research towards more effective Operating System (OS) support for asymmetric multi-core processor architectures. Section 2 outlines our proposed OS framework, aimed at enabling the effective use of asymmetric multi-core architectures by general purpose applications. Section 3 describes a novel memory management algorithm for on-core local memory, the first step towards the creation of our proof of concept implementation of this OS.

• Item Type: Conference Proceedings
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Dickman, Dr Peter and Sventek, Professor Joseph
• Authors: McIlroy, R., Dickman, P., and Sventek, J.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science