Experiences with Load Distribution on top of the Mach Microkernel
Dejan S. Milojicic, Peter Giese, and Wolfgang Zint
University of Kaiserslautern
Kaiserslautern, Germany
Abstract
The paper describes our experiences in the design, implementation and
use of load distribution on top of Mach. As a first step towards load
distribution, we provided task migration which is our base mechanism
for distributed scheduling. We compared task migration with initial
placement. In order to make more accurate scheduling decisions, we
instrumented Mach to account for network IPC and network paging.
Processing is still the prevailing factor, but we also consider
information on VM and IPC. We have conducted experiments with
well-known distributed scheduling strategies in order to prove our
assumptions. We are primarily interested in microkernel aspects of
load distribution. We report on the lessons learned while dealing
with the Mach interface and on task migration relationship to process
migration and the file system.
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