Xen Project Schedulers
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Xen Scheduling
This scheduling wiki page was originally compiled by Jacob Mathai.
Xen includes kernel boot time options for scheduling. Similiar to traditional Linux schedulers that divide CPU time for userland processes, Below you will find some Xen & DomU options for the schedulers.
History of Xen Schedulers
1. Borrowed Virtual Time (Xen 2.0/3.0)
sched=bvt Global Parameters ctx_allow - The context switch allowance is similar to the ''quantum'' in traditional schedulers. It is the minimum time that a scheduled domain will be allowed to run before being preempted. Per-domain parameters mcuadv - the MCU (Minimum Charging Unit) advance determines the proportional share of the CPU that a domain receives. It is set inversely proportionally to a domain's sharing weight. warp - the amount of `virtual time' the domain is allowed to warp backwards warpl - the warp limit is the maximum time a domain can run warped for warpu - the unwarp requirement is the minimum time a domain must run unwarped for before it can warp again
2. Atropos (Xen 2.0)
sched=atropos Atropos is a soft real time scheduler. It provides guarantees about absolute shares of the CPU, with a facility for sharing slack CPU time on a best-effort basis. It can provide timeliness guarantees for latency-sensitive domains. Every domain has an associated period and slice. The domain should receive `slice' nanoseconds every `period' nanoseconds. This allows the administrator to configure both the absolute share of the CPU a domain receives and the frequency with which it is scheduled. Note: don't over-commit the CPU when using Atropos (i.e. don't reserve more CPU than is available -- the utilization should be kept to slightly less than 100% in order to ensure predictable behavior). Per-domain parameters : period - The regular time interval during which a domain is guaranteed to receive its allocation of CPU time. slice - The length of time per period that a domain is guaranteed to run for (in the absence of voluntary yielding of the CPU). latency - The latency hint is used to control how soon after waking up a domain it should be scheduled. xtratime - This is a boolean flag that specifies whether a domain should be allowed a share of the system slack time.
3. Round Robin (Xen 2.0)
sched=rrobin The round robin scheduler is included as a simple demonstration of Xen's internal scheduler API. It is not intended for production use. Global Parameters rr_slice - The maximum time each domain runs before the next scheduling decision is made.
4. sEDF scheduler (Xen 3.0)
sched=sedf (from docs/misc/sedf_scheduler_mini-HOWTO.txt) This scheduler provides weighted CPU sharing in an intuitive way and uses realtime-algorithms to ensure time guarantees. Per-domain parameters use "xm sched-sedf <dom-id> <period> <slice> <latency-hint> <extra> <weight>" -period/slice are the normal EDF scheduling parameters in nanosecs -latency-hint is the scaled period in case the domain is doing heavy I/O (unused by the currently compiled version) -extra is a flag (0/1), which controls whether the domain can run in extra-time -weight is mutually exclusive with period/slice and specifies another way of setting a domains cpu slice See wikipedia for a short intro to EDF: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earliest_deadline_first_scheduling
5. ARINC 653 (Xen 4.0)
sched=arinc653 The arinc653 scheduler follows the ARINC 653 specification for scheduling, giving each partition (domain) a fixed, dedicated time slot for execution. Note: Current implementation does not support multicore, so 'maxcpus=1' must be set at boot.
System Calls and Scheduling
Some Scheduling System Calls /schedule.c SCHEDOP_yield SCHEDOP_block SCHEDOP_shutdown *nice( ) getpriority( ) setpriority( ) sched_getscheduler( ) sched_setscheduler( ) sched_getparam( ) sched_setparam( ) sched_yield( ) sched_get_ priority_min( ) sched_get_ priority_max( ) sched_rr_get_interval( )
A related wiki topic on Real Time Applications & Preemption .
