A Global Dynamic Load Balancing Mechanism with Low Latency for Micokernel Operating System

Abstract

As Internet of Things(IOT) devices become intelli-gent, more powerful computing capability is required. Multi-core processors are widely used in IoT devices because they provide more powerful computing capability while ensuring low power consumption. Therefore, it requires the operating system on IoT devices to support and optimize the scheduling algorithm for multi-core processors. Nowadays, microkernel-based operating systems, such as QNX Neutrino RTOS and HUAWEI Harmony OS, are widely used in IoT devices because of their real-time and security feature. However, research on multi-core scheduling for microkernel operating systems is relatively limited, especially for load balancing mechanisms. Related research is still mainly focused on the traditional monolithic operating systems, such as Linux. Therefore, this paper proposes a low-latency, high- performance, and high real-time centralized global dynamic multi-core load balancing method for the microkernel operating system. It has been implemented and tested on our own microkernel operating system named Mginkgo. The test results show that when there is load imbalance in the system, load balancing can be performed automatically so that all processors in the system can try to achieve the maximum throughput and resource utilization. And the latency brought by load balancing to the system is very low, about 4882 cycles (about 6.164us) triggered by new task creation and about 6596 cycles (about 8.328us) triggered by timing. In addition, we also tested the improvement of system throughput and CPU utilization. The results show that load balancing can improve the CPU utilization by 20% under the preset case, while the CPU utilization occupied by load balancing is negligibly low, about 0.0082%.