Optimizing Linux Kernel Performance with Tightly-Coupled Memory

• Main Authors: Lin, Jung-Tsan, 林榮燦
• Other Authors: Huang, Yu-Lun
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/42391073193637712839

碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 電機學院電機與控制學程 === 100 === TCM (Tightly-Coupled Memory) is advantaged of high-speed data access with lower power consumption than the traditional memory architecture. As such, TCM is a best fit to hold mission critical routines and data structures. Prior research of this area has emphasized on how TCM can be applied to non-OS embedded applications, like media streaming, to improve the overall performance. Possibly due to large and complicated Linux kernel code base and its data structures, there is no discussion regarding the performance impact when placing OS kernel functions into TCM. An improper arrangement of kernel functions in TCM can contrarily downgrade the performance. In this paper, we analyze the utilization and performance impact of TCM, and classify Linux kernel functions into groups per the TCM capacity. Then, we select different groups of Linux kernel functions at the compiling time and place these function groups into TCM without swapping them out during execution. By conducting the experiments with lmbench, we find that placing exec() or schedule() into TCM can reduce the local communication latency by a factor of 13% - 14%.