A Comparative Review of Contention-Aware Scheduling Algorithms to Avoid Contention in Multicore Systems

Abstract

Contention for shared resources on multicore processors is an emerging issue of great concern, as it affects directly performance of multicore CPU systems. In this regard, Contention-Aware scheduling algorithms provide a convenient and promising solution, aiming to reduce contention. By providing a collection of the scheduling methods proposed by latest research, this paper focuses on reviewing the challenges on solving the contention problem for UMA(Uniform Memory Access latency, single memory controller) and NUMA(Non Uniform Memory Access latencies, multiple memory controllers) types of system architectures. In this paper, we also provide a comparative evaluation of the solutions applicable to UMA systems which are the most extensively studied today, discussing their features, strengths and weaknesses. This paper aims to propose further improvements to these algorithms aiming to solve more efficiently the contention problem, considering that performance-asymmetric architectures may provide a cost-effective solution.