Using Petri-Net Modelling to Support the Case for HW-Assisted Task Scheduling

Abstract

Given the pervasiveness of multi-core processors in systems from various domains, the need for efficient parallelization tools has only increased during the last decade. Among the paradigms built to answer this demand, Task Parallelism stands out as a highly productive tool for leveraging data parallelism with minimum code altering. Nonetheless, its current supporting runtimes cannot efficiently execute workloads involving tasks in the fine 1-100us range, limiting its applicability. That said, by performing a thorough Petri-Net-based analysis of task parallel systems with several degrees of HW-assistance, we show that the development of Native CPU support for Task Parallelism is the key for efficiently serving these challenging workloads.