An Evolutionary Meta Hierarchical Scheduler for the Linux Operating System

Abstract

The need for supporting CSCW applications with heterogeneous and varying user requirements calls for adaptive and reconfigurable schedulers accommodating a mixture of real-time, proportional share, fixed priority and other policies, thus overcoming frustrating processor bottlenecks. In this paper we try to overcome this anomaly by proposing an evolutionary strategy for a Meta Hierarchical Scheduler (MHS) in which a user is actively involved in the design cycle of a scheduler. Our framework analyzes user requirements by formulating an Abstract Scheduler Model (ASM) for an optimum scheduler with the help of an evolutionary algorithm that satisfies the needs. Finally a C source code for this MHS is generated for the Linux kernel. Our experimental results demonstrate that our MHS enhances through the evolutionary approach, the user satisfaction level by a factor of two as compared to the satisfaction level achieved by the standard Linux scheduler.