Exploiting full computational power of current more and more hierarchical multiprocessor machines requires a very careful distribution of threads and data among the underlying non-uniform architecture. Unfortunately, most operating systems only provide a poor scheduling API that does not allow applications to transmit valuable scheduling hints to the system. In a previous paper [1], we showed that using a bubble-based thread scheduler can significantly improve applications’ performance in a portable way. However, since multithreaded applications have various scheduling requirements, there is no universal scheduler that could meet all these needs. In this paper, we present a framework that allows scheduling experts to implement and experiment with customized thread schedulers. It provides a powerful API for dynamically distributing bubbles among the machine in a high-level, portable, and efficient way. Several examples show how experts can then develop, debug and tune their own portable bubble schedulers.
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