A Tool for Binding Threads to Processors

Abstract

Many multiprocessor systems are based on distributed shared memory. It is often important to statically bind threads to processors in order to avoid remote memory access, due to performance. Finding a good allocation takes long time and it is hard to know when to stop searching for a better one. It is sometimes impossible to run the application on the target machine. The developer needs a tool that finds the good allocations without the target multiprocessor. We present a tool that uses a greedy algorithm and produces allocations that are more than 40% faster (in average) than when using a binpacking algorithm. The number of allocations to be evaluated can be reduced by 38% with a 2% performance loss. Finally, an algorithm is proposed that is promising in avoiding local maxima.