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Tuning The Kernel With A Genetic Algorithm

Posted by michael on from the self-modifying-code dept.

fsck! writes "Jake Moilanen provided a series of four patches against the 2.6.9 Linux kernel that introduce a simple genetic algorithm used for automatic tuning. The patches update the anticipatory IO scheduler and the zaphod CPU scheduler to both use the new in-kernel library, theoretically allowing them to automatically tune themselves for the best possible performance for any given workload. Jake says, 'using these patches, there are small gains (1-3%) in Unixbench & SpecJBB. I am hoping a scheduler guru will able to rework them to give higher gains.'"

1 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. Other kernel parameters? by Feint · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Could this be extended to include other kernel parameters as well? Depending on your app, things like TCP timeouts and other muck can have a large impact. Tuning this stuff is currently somewhat of a black art. Then as the user community of the app becomes familiar after rollout, a lot of the usage patterns change. In a few cases, this means we end up having to re-tune the kernel.

    If this package could be extended to the other parameters, it would save my customers a *lot* of time and money.

    If nothing else, this could be a deciding factor for some of our clients to use linux instead of windows.