Thread scheduling for multi-core platforms

As multi-core processors with tens or hundreds of cores begin to proliferate, system optimization issues once faced only by the high-performance computing (HPC) community will become important to all programmers. However, unlike with HPC, the focus of the multicore programmer will be on programming productivity and portability as much as performance. We introduce in this paper a novel scheduling framework for multicore processors that strikes a balance between control over the system and the level of abstraction. Our framework uses high-level information supplied by the user to guide thread scheduling and also, where necessary, gives the programmer fine control over thread placement.