A case for transforming parallel runtimes into operating system kernels

Kyle C. Hale, Peter A Dinda

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

16 Scopus citations

Abstract

The needs of parallel runtime systems and the increasingly sophisticated languages and compilers they support do not line up with the services provided by general-purpose OSes. Furthermore, the semantics available to the runtime are lost at the system-call boundary in such OSes. Finally, because a runtime executes at user-level in such an environment, it cannot leverage hardware features that require kernel-mode privileges|a large portion of the functionality of the ma-chine is lost to it. These limitations warp the design, imple-mentation, functionality, and performance of parallel run-times. We summarize the case for eliminating these com-promises by transforming parallel runtimes into OS kernels. We also demonstrate that it is feasible to do so. Our evi-dence comes from Nautilus, a prototype kernel framework that we built to support such transformations. After de-scribing Nautilus, we report on our experiences using it to transform three very difierent runtimes into kernels.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationHPDC 2015 - Proceedings of the 24th International Symposium on High-Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages27-32
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781450335508
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 15 2015
Event24th ACM Symposium on High-Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing, HPDC 2015 - Portland, United States
Duration: Jun 15 2015Jun 19 2015

Publication series

NameHPDC 2015 - Proceedings of the 24th International Symposium on High-Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing

Other

Other24th ACM Symposium on High-Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing, HPDC 2015
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityPortland
Period6/15/156/19/15

Keywords

  • HRTs
  • Hybrid runtimes
  • Nautilus
  • Parallel runtimes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Science Applications
  • Computational Theory and Mathematics
  • Software

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