Google SoC 2009 Idea

[Robert Watson]

On Wed, 25 Feb 2009, Tim Kientzle wrote:

>> I have not gone through the process scheduler code of Free BSD. Hence, I am 
>> not yet aware about the current support for Multicore Architectures.
>
> Since you posted to a lot of different lists, I think you probably don't 
> already use FreeBSD. (If you did, why would you post to NetBSD and 
> DragonflyBSD lists?)  Scheduler work is quite complex and interacts heavily 
> with the rest of the system; it may not be a good choice for someone who 
> doesn't already have a lot of experience with FreeBSD.

All the things you say are true, but let's not be too hard on the new guy, 
however -- many of our GSoC students don't have previous FreeBSD 
kernel-hacking experience.  However, it does mean that they have to pick 
project ideas that are well-suited to a significant warmup and investigation 
period on the front end of the project.

I'm also not convinced that a scheduler project along these lines would be the 
most successful, but I wonder if a more experimental-spin proposal for looking 
at how to investigate poor scheduling decisions using dtrace, instrumentation 
and metrics to help us understand performance on NUMA systems, and exploring 
the impact of heuristics might go a long way.  As our ULE scheduler has most 
of the non-NUMA features suggested in the original already, it would actually 
be a nice starting point for this.  I understand Jeff Roberson has been doing 
some initial looking at NUMA, but more from a memory placement and less from a 
scheduling perspective?

Robert N M Watson
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge

>
> You should probably tell us a little more about yourself:
>
> What kind of student?  Graduate?  Undergraduate?
> Are you in a CS program or some other engineering program?
>
> Do you use FreeBSD?  How long have you used it?
> What do you do with it?
>
> Have you read Kirk McKusick's book on FreeBSD internals?
>
> Have you built and installed a FreeBSD system from source code?
>
> Have you taken classes on OS internals?
>
> How much C programming have you done?
>
> What areas of FreeBSD have you had the most problems with?
> How would you make those areas better?
>
> Tim Kientzle
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