Efficient Scheduling Policies for Microsecond-Scale Tasks

Explore efficient scheduling policies for microsecond-scale tasks in this 15-minute conference talk from NSDI '22. Delve into the challenges datacenter operators face in supporting microsecond-latency applications while maximizing CPU resource utilization. Learn about various systems that allow multiple applications to run on the same server, and discover why many struggle to balance latency and efficiency, especially with tasks as short as 1μs. Examine different policy options for allocating cores across applications and load-balancing tasks across cores within an application through simulation comparisons. Gain insights into the surprising effectiveness of static core allocations for small tasks and the superior performance of work stealing among load-balancing policies. Understand how implementing the best-performing policy choices can yield significant efficiency improvements without compromising latency. Follow the researchers' journey as they build upon the Caladan core-allocating system to demonstrate these improvements in practice.