Run-Time Resource Management at the Operating System Level

Current hardware platforms provide the applications with an extended set of physical resources, as well as a well defined set of power and performance optimization mechanisms (i.e., hardware control knobs). The software stack, meanwhile, is responsible of taking direct advantage of these resources, in order to meet application functional and non-functional requirements. The support from the Operating System (OS) is of utmost importance, since it gives opportunity to optimize the system as a whole.Purpose of this chapter is to introduce the reader to the challenge of managing physical and logical resources in complex multi- and many-core architectures, focusing on emerging MPSoC platforms.