Adaptive scheduling under memory pressure on multiprogrammed SMPs

We present a simple scheduling strategy that copes with the adverse effects of paging on multiprogrammed SMPs. We consider open, multiuser SMP servers, typically found in academic or industrial environments. Our strategy incorporates four uniquely combined features. It is adaptive, in the sense that the programs themselves take scheduling actions upon detecting memory pressure; it is dynamic, since programs detect the likelihood of paging at runtime by communicating with the operating system through a lightweight interface; it is preventive, because it takes scheduling actions before paging occurs; and it is non-intrusive, because the local scheduling actions taken by a program do not affect adversely, but act to the benefit of other programs sharing the system. We present an efficient implementation of our strategy in Linux and show with a realistic production workload that it can improve the response time of the Linux kernel under memory pressure by up to a factor of eight and the throughput by up to a factor of four.