Quantifying the cost of context switch

ABSTRACT

Measuring the indirect cost of context switch is a challenging problem. In this paper, we show our results of experimentally quantifying the indirect cost of context switch using a synthetic workload. Specifically, we measure the impact of program data size and access stride on context switch cost. We also demonstrate the potential impact of OS background interrupt handling on the measurement accuracy. Such impact can be alleviated by using a multi-processor system on which one processor is employed for context switch measurement while the other runs OS background tasks.

REFERENCES

• 1: Anant Agarwal , John Hennessy , Mark Horowitz, Cache performance of operating system and multiprogramming workloads, ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS), v.6 n.4, p.393-431, Nov. 1988 [doi>10.1145/48012.48037]
• 2: R. Fromm and N. Treuhaft. Revisiting the cache interference costs of context switching. http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/252861.html.
• 3: R. Jain. The Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis: Techniques for Experimental Design, Measurement, Simulation and Modeling. John Wiley & Sons, 2001.
• 4: Larry McVoy , Carl Staelin, lmbench: portable tools for performance analysis, Proceedings of the 1996 annual conference on USENIX Annual Technical Conference, p.23-23, January 22-26, 1996, San Diego, CA
• 5: Jeffrey C. Mogul , Anita Borg, The effect of context switches on cache performance, Proceedings of the fourth international conference on Architectural support for programming languages and operating systems, p.75-84, April 08-11, 1991, Santa Clara, California, United States
• 6: J. K. Ousterhout. Why Aren't Operating Systems Getting Faster As Fast As Hardware? In In Proc. of the USENIX Summer Conference, pages 247--256, Anaheim, CA, June 1990.
• 7: G. Edward Suh , Srinivas Devadas , Larry Rudolph, Analytical cache models with applications to cache partitioning, Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Supercomputing, p.1-12, June 2001, Sorrento, Italy [doi>10.1145/377792.377797]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.4 OPERATING SYSTEMS
      D.4.8 Performance
          Subjects: Measurements

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.4 PERFORMANCE OF SYSTEMS
      Subjects: Measurement techniques

General Terms:
Experimentation, Measurement, Performance

Keywords:
cache interference, context switch