Use of Data Mining in Scheduler Optimization

The operating system’s role in a computer system is to manage the various resources. One of these resources is the CPU (Central Processing Unit). It is managed by a component of the operating system called the CPU scheduler. Schedulers are optimized for typical workloads expected to run on the platform. However, a single scheduler may not be appropriate for all workloads. That is, a scheduler may schedule a workload such that the completion time is minimized, but when another type of workload is run on the platform, scheduling and therefore completion time will not be optimal; a different scheduling algorithm, or a different set of parameters, may work better. Several approaches to solving this problem have been proposed. The objective of this survey is to summarize the approaches based on data mining, which are available in the literature. In addition to solutions that can be directly utilized for solving this problem, we are interested in data mining research in related areas that have potential for use in operating system scheduling. We also explain general technical issues involved in scheduling in modern computers, including parallel scheduling issues related to multi-core CPUs. We propose a taxonomy that classifies the scheduling approaches we discuss into different categories.