Operating System and Scheduling for Future Multicore and Many-Core Platforms

Abstract

This chapter reviews various works proposed in the literature about operating system (OS) models for multicore and many-core systems. It focuses on the critical problem of scheduling in multiprocessor and distributed systems, comprising scheduling of applications with precise timing requirements. Various models of OSes and kernels have been proposed in the literature. It must be noted that the Linux kernel developers' community is focusing more and more on the issue of scalability of the kernel in the number of underlying cores. The use of microkernel-based OSes has been investigated also in the domain of supercomputing on multiprocessor systems, like what happened with the Amoeba, Mach and Chorus OSes. One of the core features of an OS is its ability to multiplex the access to the available physical resources to multiple processes/threads that run at the same time onto the system.