|Publication number||US7516151 B2|
|Application number||US 10/979,413|
|Publication date||7 Apr 2009|
|Filing date||1 Nov 2004|
|Priority date||1 Nov 2004|
|Also published as||US20060095910|
|Publication number||10979413, 979413, US 7516151 B2, US 7516151B2, US-B2-7516151, US7516151 B2, US7516151B2|
|Inventors||Scott J. Norton, Hyun J. Kim|
|Original Assignee||Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.|
|Export Citation||BiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan|
|Patent Citations (10), Referenced by (5), Classifications (12), Legal Events (4)|
|External Links: USPTO, USPTO Assignment, Espacenet|
In some operating systems, an unbounded set of instances of homogenous objects is often represented with a linked list. For example, a set of active threads may be represented by items in single dynamic linked list of threads (known as active threads list) in the scheduler subsystem of the operating system.
The single dynamic linked list of threads may be traversed from time to time (e.g., once every second) in order to re-prioritize threads with non-fixed priority. The re-prioritization may be based on a set of parameters, such as the CPU consumption of the threads, and involves adjusting the priority assigned to each thread. In the HP-UX™ operating system architecture (available from the Hewlett-Packard Company of Palo Alto, Calif.), a kernel daemon thread is employed to traverse the dynamic linked list to perform the aforementioned re-prioritization. Since the list may be unbounded in size, such traversal by a single kernel daemon thread may take some time.
With reference to
When a thread is created, it is scheduled into one of the per-processor run queues, and more specifically, into a priority band of a per-processor run queue based on the priority value associated with its thread object copy in one of the hash chains. In the example of
Unfortunately, while the traversal of the list takes place, a critical system-wide resource is rendered unavailable for use by other entities. Specifically, a global lock is held by the kernel daemon thread for the duration of the traversal. While this system-wide resource is held, certain operations such as process/thread creation and termination are blocked to prevent the thread from being changed while re-prioritizing takes place.
For a system with few active threads, such blocking may simply cause a minor delay if operations that require the availability of the system-wide lock is undertaken while the kernel daemon thread traverses the dynamic linked list. For a system with millions of active threads, such blocking may cause an unreasonable delay and unacceptable degradation in system performance.
The invention relates, in an embodiment, to a computer-implemented method for traversing a first set of objects in a first dynamic list in a computer system. The method includes partitioning copies of the first set of objects into a plurality of second dynamic lists, each of the plurality of second dynamic lists being configured to contain a subset of the copies of the first set of objects, copies of the first set of objects being disposed in the plurality of second dynamic lists. The method also includes traversing the plurality of second dynamic lists using a plurality of traversal threads, thereby causing at least some of the copies of the first set of objects to be traversed in parallel.
In another embodiment, the invention relates to an article of manufacture comprising a program storage medium having computer readable code embodied therein. The computer readable code being configured to traverse a first set of objects in a first dynamic list in a computer system. The article of manufacture includes computer-implemented code for partitioning copies of the first set of objects into a plurality of second dynamic lists, each of the plurality of second dynamic lists being configured to contain a subset of the copies of the first set of objects, the copies of the first set of objects being disposed in the plurality of second dynamic lists. The article of manufacture also includes computer-implemented code for traversing the plurality of second dynamic lists using a plurality of traversal threads, thereby causing at least some of the copies of the first set of objects to be traversed in parallel.
In yet another embodiment, the invention relates to an arrangement configured for traversing a first set of objects in a first dynamic list in a computer system. The arrangement includes a plurality of first means configured to contain copies of the first set of objects, each of the plurality of first means being configured to contain a subset of the copies of the first set of objects. The arrangement also includes means for traversing at least two of the plurality of first means in parallel, thereby causing at least some of the copies of the first set of objects to be traversed in parallel.
These and other features of the present invention will be described in more detail below in the detailed description of the invention and in conjunction with the following figures.
The present invention is illustrated by way of example, and not by way of limitation, in the figures of the accompanying drawings and in which like reference numerals refer to similar elements and in which:
The present invention will now be described in detail with reference to a few embodiments thereof as illustrated in the accompanying drawings. In the following description, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the present invention. It will be apparent, however, to one skilled in the art, that the present invention may be practiced without some or all of these specific details. In other instances, well known process steps and/or structures have not been described in detail in order to not unnecessarily obscure the present invention.
Various embodiments are described hereinbelow, including methods and techniques. It should be kept in mind that the invention might also cover articles of manufacture that includes a computer readable medium on which computer-readable instructions for carrying out embodiments of the inventive technique are stored. The computer readable medium may include, for example, semiconductor, magnetic, opto-magnetic, optical, or other forms of computer readable medium for storing computer readable code. Further, the invention may also cover apparatuses for practicing embodiments of the invention. Such apparatus may include circuits, dedicated and/or programmable, to carry out tasks pertaining to embodiments of the invention. Examples of such apparatus include a general purpose computer and/or a dedicated computing device when appropriately programmed and may include a combination of a computer/computing device and dedicated/programmable circuits adapted for the various tasks pertaining to embodiments of the invention.
The use of hash tables to facilitate data retrieval is well-known. Hash tables are particularly well-suited to implementing fast lookups. In the present case, the inventors employ hashing to partition a large data set, such as the set of active threads.
In an embodiment, objects in the prior art global unbounded list are copied into a plurality of hash buckets. Each hash bucket has a pointer to a dynamic linked list, known as a hash chain. When a copy of an object is hashed to a particular bucket, that object copy is inserted into the hash chain that is pointed to by that bucket. The plurality of hash chains is then traversed by a plurality of threads in parallel in order to perform the aforementioned re-prioritizing. In this manner, the time-consuming serial approach of the prior art on the single unbounded thread is replaced by parallel operations on the plurality of hash chains.
Hashing may be performed using any hashing algorithm. In an embodiment, hashing is performed using a modulus operation on the ID of the thread represented by the object copy. In an embodiment, the base of the modulus operation is set to be equal to the number of hash buckets, which is also set to be equal to the number of available processors in a multi-processor system. The number of available processors may equal to the number of processors in the computer system or may be fewer since one or more of the processors in the computer system may be reserved and may thus be unavailable for the traversal task. Since there are as many hash buckets as there are available processors in the computer system, and since there is a one-to-one correspondence between a hash bucket and its hash chain, this arrangement makes it possible for the available processors to traverse the plurality of hash buckets in parallel, thereby reducing the amount of time required to traverse all object copies.
In an embodiment, hash chains are implemented by double-linked lists. The ID of a thread may be employed as a pointer to the object copy that represents that thread in one of the hash chains. Accordingly, when a thread terminates and needs to be removed from one of the hash chains, it is not necessary to perform a hash to find out which hash chain contains the object copy that corresponds to that thread. The use of the thread ID as a pointer allows direct manipulation of the double-linked list to remove the object copy that corresponds to the thread when the thread terminates. Accordingly, removal from a hash chain can be a very fast and low cost operation.
An analogy may be made to a queue of customers waiting in line to be served. Each customer holds a ticket, the value of which determines when the customer would be served. In this particular customer service scenario, the ticket value held by a customer is changed from time to time depending on certain parameters. The queue of customers may be analogized to the unbounded single list in the prior art, with each customer representing a thread object. The ticket value held by each customer may be analogized to the priority assigned to each thread object. Thus, in the prior art, a single employee (analogy: single kernel daemon) serially works his way through the entire queue of customers (analogy: single unbounded list) to adjust the value of the customers' tickets (analogy: re-prioritize the priorities of the thread objects).
In embodiments of the present invention, the thread objects are hashed into a plurality of bucket queues. Thus, the customers sent their representatives, who are divided into smaller groups. An employee can perform the ticket value adjustment task for each of the smaller groups. Accordingly, a plurality of employees (analogy: parallel threads) can be employed to adjust, in a parallel manner, the ticket values held by the customers' representatives (analogy: reprioritize the priorities held by the thread object copies) in the plurality of small customer groups (analogy: in the plurality of hash chains).
The end result is still the same, i.e., the priorities are re-prioritized. However, embodiments of the invention allow such re-prioritizing to take place in parallel by multiple threads (and multiple processors). The scheduler may then employ the priority values held by the thread copies in the hash chains to determine when a thread should be scheduled into one of the processor's run queues for execution.
Each hash bucket has a pointer to a hash chain, which is implemented by a linked list in an embodiment. Thus hash bucket 202 has a pointer to a hash chain 212, for example. Copies of thread objects in list 102 are hashed into the hash buckets such that a thread object in list 102 would have its thread copy hashed into one of the hash buckets. To facilitate rapid removal of objects from the hash chains, the hash chains may be implemented using double-linked lists. During re-prioritizing, a plurality of traversal threads operates on the plurality of hash chains in parallel to re-calculate the priority values associated with the thread object copies in the hash chains.
The scheduler then operates off the dynamic hash data structure, and more particularly off the priority values contained in the thread object copies in order to schedule the thread objects into one of the processors' run queues. In the example of
Removal of a thread object from a hash chain is performed when the thread terminates. If the thread ID is employed as a pointer, removal may be accomplished using conventional linked list pointer manipulation techniques. If necessary, hashing may be performed to pin-point the identity of the hash bucket and the associated hash chain. Thereafter, the hash chain may be traversed until the thread object to be removed is found. The removal of an object from a linked list may be performed using conventional linked list pointer manipulation.
As can be appreciated from the foregoing, the invention permits the traversal of objects in an unbounded active threads list, which was traversed in a serial manner in the prior art, to be traversed by multiple traversal threads in parallel. In this manner, performance is greatly improved since the thread copy objects may be re-prioritized in parallel quickly. Since the dynamic hash data structure is updated upon thread startup and thread removal, it accurately reflects the threads tracked by the active threads list, and may be relied upon by the scheduler in scheduling threads for execution.
Although the invention has been discussed in the context of a active threads list for use in conjunction with a scheduler, embodiments of the invention applies to any situation wherein a dynamic list needs to be traversed.
While this invention has been described in terms of several embodiments, there are alterations, permutations, and equivalents that fall within the scope of this invention. It should also be noted that there are many alternative ways of implementing the methods and apparatuses of the present invention. It is therefore intended that the following appended claims be interpreted as including all such alterations, permutations, and equivalents as fall within the true spirit and scope of the present invention.
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|U.S. Classification||1/1, 707/999.102, 707/999.202, 707/999.101|
|Cooperative Classification||Y10S707/99953, G06F9/485, G06F9/5027, Y10S707/99943, Y10S707/99942|
|European Classification||G06F9/50A6, G06F9/48C4P|
|1 Nov 2004||AS||Assignment|
Owner name: HEWLETT-PACKARD DEVELOPMENT COMPANY, L.P., TEXAS
Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNORS:NORTON, SCOTT J.;KIM, HYUN J.;REEL/FRAME:015955/0993
Effective date: 20040929
|8 Sep 2009||CC||Certificate of correction|
|20 Sep 2012||FPAY||Fee payment|
Year of fee payment: 4
|9 Nov 2015||AS||Assignment|
Owner name: HEWLETT PACKARD ENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT LP, TEXAS
Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNOR:HEWLETT-PACKARD DEVELOPMENT COMPANY, L.P.;REEL/FRAME:037079/0001
Effective date: 20151027