Dynamic scheduler for multi-core systems

Many dynamic scheduling algorithms have been proposed in the past. With the advent of multi core processors, there is a need to schedule multiple tasks on multiple cores. The scheduling algorithm needs to utilize all the available cores efficiently. The multicore processors may be SMPs or AMPs with shared memory architecture. In this paper, we propose a dynamic scheduling algorithm in which the scheduler resides on all cores of a multi-core processor and accesses a shared Task Data Structure (TDS) to pick up ready-to-execute tasks. This method is unique in the sense that the processor has the onus of picking up tasks whenever it is idle. We have discussed the proposed scheduling algorithm using a set of tasks as an example. The paper concludes with the discussion of advantages and limitations of the proposed scheduling algorithm.