Opening the Box: Diagnosing Operating System Task-Scheduler Behavior on Highly Multicore Machines

Learn how to diagnose performance issues in multicore applications by examining operating system task scheduler behavior in this 35-minute conference talk from SREcon24 Europe/Middle East/Africa. Explore tools developed for visualizing the Linux kernel task scheduler's decision-making process, which impacts application performance through core placement, task selection, timing, and duration control. Discover freely available visualization tools that help identify scheduler-related performance problems, particularly in highly multithreaded applications running on large multicore machines. Gain insights from Inria-Paris researcher Julia Lawall on navigating the complexities of scheduler diagnostics, where decisions are typically hidden within operating system code and generate extensive data in multicore environments.