Load Balance Scheduling Algorithm for CMP Architecture

Chip MultiProcessor (CMP) has been the main stream in microprocessor design. Shared on-chip L2 caches are widely used in processors with homogeneous CMP architecture. In the paper, we propose a scheduling algorithm for such processors and the shared L2 caches are taken into account in this algorithm. First, the processor cores on chip will be divided into different core groups. The scheduling domain is also constructed according to these core groups. And then the load vectors for load balance are defined. Then a scheduling algorithm is designed and implemented for load balance on CMP architecture. We have compared our algorithm with the CMP scheduling algorithm of Linux. The experimental results show that, when there are multi-threads in execution, the load balancing between processors is achieved by our algorithm, the total execution time is reduced by 3%, and the miss rate of L2 cache is reduced by 0.2% as well.