The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis
The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis
Workshop: Second International Symposium on Quantitative Codesign of Supercomputers
Authors: Ron Minnich (Google LLC)
Abstract: Designs of integrated stacks on, e.g., x86 systems, often build on a fiction that does not exist: that of a 1994-era Pentium over which the software has complete control. As we have worked to point out since 1999, this is a fiction: in fact, kernels run on a virtual system over which they have little control. This would be fine if it did not affect performance, but it can in the end have significant throughput impacts, e.g., on some modern systems, entire sockets can stop for 1/2 a second at a time.
I will discuss some of the cases in which these Potemkin Villages have caused real trouble and suggest possible ways to deal with them on old (x86) and new (RISC-V) systems.
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