TASK MANAGER FOR GENERAL-PURPOSE OPERATING SYSTEMS

Abstract

This paper suggests a possible task manager implementation for generalpurpose operating systems. The aim of the study is to maximize processor utilization in exclusive mode for general-purpose operating systems. The subject research field of this study is relevant today in the light of global informatization and the urgent issue of improving computing performance. In order to achieve the objectives, set in this study, several particular problems have been solved, which include analysing various scheduling strategies for computational task execution, comparing specifics of various operating systems, choosing a system resource allocating method, developing a software for running calculations in priority mode, and minimizing scheduling and dispatching overheads. During the study, we have analysed four families of general-purpose operating systems and their features. A summary information on the utilized scheduling and dispatching algorithms has been prepared based on the analysis results, which allowed choosing the appropriate approach to solve the problem under consideration. A resource allocation method has been chosen and implemented as software unit, based on mechanisms common to the considered systems that developed software starts computations under a configuration corresponding to the system's topology, sets a realtime scheduling policy for threads, assigns them to available computational cores, and independently dispatches task execution. The effectiveness of the developed software is confirmed by test runs and measurement of such indicators as runtime, number of context switches and accesses to external memory. The main results obtained can be applied when designing new and improving the existing general-purpose operating systems.