Maximizing OS Support for Distributed Systems in Lecture III

1. Lecture III: OS Support CMPT 401 Dr. Alexandra Fedorova

2. The Role of the OS • The operating system needs to provide support for implementation of distributed systems • We will look at how distributed systems services interact with the operating systems • We will discuss the support that the operating system needs to provide

3. Direct Interaction with the OS • A process directly interacts with the OS via system calls • Example: a web browser, a web server Process:a DS component system calls OS

4. Interaction via Middleware Layer Process:a DS component • A process directly interacts with the OS via a middleware layer • A middleware layer directly interacts with the OS • Example: a peer-to-peer file system implemented over a distributed hash table Function calls or IPC Middleware system calls OS

5. Interaction via Inclusion OS DS component • A DS component is a part of the operating system, i.e., an operating system daemon • Example: Network File System (NFS) daemon • Runs as a kernel thread, shares address space with the kernel, interacts with the rest of the OS via function calls • Why would one want to build a DS component that interacts with the OS via inclusion?

6. Digression: Protection Implementation In the Kernel • System calls are expensive • Why? – Protection domains • Refresh memory protection from your OS class • Good thing: we get memory protection • Bad thing: crossing protection domains is expensive. Why? • So is this the best solution?

7. Alternative: Protection Via Language • Safety features are guaranteed by language/runtime • Compiler checks safe memory access • In addition there are manifests w.r.t. what the process will and will not do • This way you get protection • And no need for hardware protection domains – everything can run in a single address space • Singularity: an OS from Microsoft implemented these concepts • ... End digression

8. Infrastructure Provided by the OS • Networking • Interface to network devices • Implementation of common protocols: TPC, UDP, IP • Processes and threads • Efficient scheduling, load balancing and thread switching • Efficient thread synchronization • Efficient inter-process communication (IPC)

9. The Need for Good Process/Thread Support • Many distributed applications are implemented using multiple threads or processes • Why?

10. Motivation for Multithreaded Designs Multiple threads Single thread • Servers provide access to large data sets (web servers, e-commerce servers) • Even in the presence of caching, they often need to do I/O (to access files on disk or a network FS) • I/O takes much longer than computation • Overlapping I/O with computation to improve response time • Threads make it easy to overlap I/O with computation • While one thread blocks on I/O another can perform computation time compute block 1 request 1.6 requests

11. Process or Thread Scheduling • Will use “process” and “thread” interchangeably • A single-threaded process maps to a kernel thread • Each thread in a multithreaded process (usually) maps to a kernel thread • A scheduler decides which thread runs next on the CPU • To ensure good support for DS components, a scheduler must: • Be scalable • Balance the load well • Ensure good interactive response • Keep context switches to a minimum (why?)

12. Case Study: Solaris™ 10 OS • Solaris is often used on server systems • Known for its good scalability, good load balancing and interactive performance • We will look at Solaris runqueues and how they are managed • A runqueue is a scheduling queue • A structure containing pointers to runnable threads – i.e., threads that are waiting for CPU

13. Runqueues in Solaris Global kernel priority queue kpqueue User priority queues for CPU0 disp_qs User priority queues for CPU1 disp_qs Pri 0 Pri 1 Pri N Pri 0 Pri 1 Pri N … … • There is a user-level queue for each priority level • A dispatcher runs the thread from the highest-priority non-empty queue

14. Processor Load Balancing • Load balancing ensures that the load is evenly distributed among the CPUs on a multiprocessor • This improves the overall response time • Solaris kernel ensures that queues are well balanced when it enqueues a thread into a runqueue /* * setbackdq() keeps runqs balanced such that the difference in length * between the chosen runq and the next one is no more than RUNQ_MAX_DIFF. * (…) */ A comment from Solaris source code. Source: http://cvs.opensolaris.org/source/xref/onnv/onnv-gate/usr/src/uts/common/disp/disp.c, line 1200

15. Tuning Thread Priorities For Improved Response Time • If a thread has waited too long for a processor, its priority is elevated, so no thread is starved • Threads holding critical resources are put to the front of the queue so that they release those resources as quickly as possible /* * Put the specified thread on the front of the dispatcher * queue corresponding to its current priority. * * Called with the thread in transition, onproc or stopped state * and locked (transition implies locked) and at high spl. * Returns with the thread in TS_RUN state and still locked. */ A comment on setfrontdqfrom Solaris source code. Source: http://cvs.opensolaris.org/source/xref/onnv/onnv-gate/usr/src/uts/common/disp/disp.c, line 1381

16. Ensuring Good Responsiveness in Time-Sharing Scheduler • Solaris’s time-sharing scheduler (the default scheduler) assigns priorities so as to ensure good interactive performance • Timeslice: the amount of time a thread can run on CPU before it is pre-empted • If thread T used up it’s entire timeslice on CPU: • priority(T)↓, timeslice(T)↑ • If thread T has given up CPU before using up its timeslice: • priority(T) ↑, timeslice (T) ↓ • Why is this done?

17. Time-Sharing Scheduler: Answers • Minimizing context switch costs: • CPU-bound threads stay on CPU longer without a context switch • In compensation, they are scheduled less often, due to decreased priority • Reducing the number of context switches improves performance • Ensuring good response for interactive applications • Interactive applications usually don’t use up their entire timeslice • Example: process a network message and release the CPU before the timeslice expires • Those applications will have their priority elevated, so they will respond quickly when response is needed (e.g., the next network packet arrives)

18. What Limits Performance of MP/MT Applications? • The cost of context switching – depends on the hardware; the OS cannot fix it alone • Save/restore the registers • Flush the CPU pipeline • If switching address spaces • May need to flush the TLB (depends on the processor) • May need to flush the cache (depends on the processor) • The cost of inter-process communication(IPC): requires context switching • The cost of inter-thread synchronization – by and large depends on the program structure; OS can fix some of it, but not all

19. Thread Synchronization shared data If lock is not available, threads wait Execution becomes serialized

20. Next… • Talk about synchronization • Operating system support for efficient synchronization • Transactional memory – new programming paradigm for efficient synchronization