Tuning Virtual Memory for Performance

• Thesis title in Czech: Tuning Virtual Memory for Performance
• Thesis title in English: Tuning Virtual Memory for Performance
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2006/2007
• Thesis type: diploma thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Software Engineering (32-KSI)
• Supervisor: RNDr. Tomáš Kalibera, Ph.D.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 25.10.2006
• Date of assignment: 25.10.2006
• Date and time of defence: 21.05.2007 00:00
• Date of electronic submission: 21.05.2007
• Date of proceeded defence: 21.05.2007
• Opponents: RNDr. Jakub Yaghob, Ph.D.

Guidelines

Although the placement of application code and data in physical memory can have significant effect on performance, it is determined non-deterministically in current operating systems (Windows, Linux), and thus cannot be tuned. The goal of the thesis is to extend the Linux operating system kernel to allow applications both to detect and modify the mapping of virtual memory pages to physical memory pages, and thus in particular to achieve better run-time performance.

The practical applicability of the extension will be tested on two scenarios: re-starting an application with the mapping used previously and modifying the mapping at application run-time. The first scenario applies to adaptive planning of benchmark durations in benchmark experiments. The second scenario applies to applications adaptively improving their own run-time performance. Both scenarios can be tested on memory intensive applications, such as [3].

References

[1] Kalibera T., Bulej L., Tuma P.: Benchmark Precision and Random Initial State, Proceedings of SPECTS 2005, SCS.
[2] Kalibera T., Bulej, L., Tuma, P.: Automated Detection of Performance Regressions: The Mono Experience, IEEE.
[3] Mayer R., Buneman O.: FFT Benchmark, ftp://ftp.nosc.mil/pub/aburto/fft.
[4] The Linux Documentation Project, http://www.tldp.org/.