Resource Management

The increasing size and scale of supercomputer systems pose new resource-management problems. Enormous memories (in the gigabyte range) require management techniques beyond the LRU-like paging that is used to manage megabyte-scale memories. New scheduling techniques are required to handle large numbers of processors, nonuniform memory access architectures, and processor heterogeneity (different instruction sets). A common requirement for these and related areas is the need for more sophisticated resource management, including the ability to explicitly manage resources (e.g., dedicate processors and memory to specific applications). This allows the sophistication to be moved outside the operating system to an environment- or application-specific resource manager. Such a manager can implement appropriate policies to ensure effective resource usage for particular applications or specialized environments.