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Published byGalilea Whitcomb Modified over 9 years ago
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Challenges and Opportunities for System Software in the Multi-Core Era or The Sky is Falling, The Sky is Falling!
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Challenge: scaling Scaling software –Virtual Machine Monitors (easy) –Operating Systems (hard) –Applications (hardest) Scaling hardware –Memory bandwidth –I/O bandwidth Prediction: mainstream will remain < 100 cores for next 5 years. Lack of applications, Amdahl’s law and power efficiency constraints.
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Challenge: scheduling Too expensive to context switch –gang scheduling many cores inefficient –disruptive to application Complex resource hierarchy –cache, memory, I/O Opportunity: VMM and OS schedulers will have to understand and schedule complex hierarchies Prediction: partitioning cores rather than time sharing will be the norm
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Challenge: isolation Fault isolation and recovery –Large transistor count cores will fail Performance isolation –Shared resources, e.g., caches, I/O bandwidth Opportunity: –Build fault containment mechanisms into the system architecture –Provide resource reservation controls –System software must handle and recover from faults, enforce performance isolation –Virtualization makes physical machines stateless and interchangeable
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Challenge: distance Off-chip resources get farther and farther –Latency-bound applications suffer –I/O becomes even more heavy-weight Opportunity –Bring communication closer to the cores –Rethink I/O architectures Prediction –We will see on-chip I/O controllers and buses
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Opportunity: assists Extra cores can be used for –I/O processing –self monitoring Specialized cores –computation (conventional and stream) –communication (TCP processing) –graphics processing (GPU elements) System software to take advantage of these resources
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Opportunity: virtualization Killer app for multi-core –Easier to scale job-level parallelism Power efficiency –Scale each application to maximize performance per watt Hide complex hardware topology
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