Prediction-Based Micro-Scheduler: Toward Responsive Scheduling of General-Purpose Operating Systems

In this paper, we propose a novel scheduling technique to improve the responsiveness of a real-time process while maintaining relative execution rates of non-real-time processes, called the prediction-based micro-scheduler. It runs upon an existing macro-scheduler and it conditionally rearranges the scheduling pattern generated by the macro-scheduler based on urgent interval prediction and lock hold time prediction. The rearrangement occurs if one process seeks to enter a long nonpreemptible section and the operation is predicted to significantly disturb the future execution of a real-time process. We implemented the prototype on Linux 2.6.19. Experimental results show that the average OS latency of a real-time process is reduced up to 34 percent of the original one while still maintaining relative execution rates of non-real-time processes. Moreover, the performance degradation caused by the micro-scheduler does not exceed 5 percent.