Decentralising resource management in operating systems

Neugebauer, Rolf (2003) Decentralising resource management in operating systems. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

This dissertation explores operating system mechanisms to allow resource-aware applications to be involved in the process of managing resources under the premise that these applications (1) potentially have some (implicit) notion of their future resource demands and (2) can adapt their resource demands. The general idea is to provide feedback to resource-aware applications so that they can proactively participate in the management of resources. This approach has the benefit that resource management policies can be removed from central entities and the operating system has only to provide mechanism. Furthermore, in contrast to centralised approaches, application specific features can be more easily exploited.

To achieve this aim, I propose to deploy a microeconomic theory, namely congestion or shadow pricing, which has recently received attention for managing congestion in communication networks. Applications are charged based on the potential "damage" they cause to other consumers by using resources. Consumers interpret these congestion charges as feedback signals which they use to adjust their resource consumption. It can be shown theoretically that such a system with consumers merely acting in their own self-interest will converge to a social optimum.

This dissertation focuses on the operating system mechanisms required to decentralise resource management this way. In particular it identifies four mechanisms: pricing & charging, credit accounting, resource usage accounting, and multiplexing. While the latter two are mechanisms generally required for the accurate management of resources, pricing & charging and credit accounting present novel mechanisms. It is argued that congestion prices are the correct economic model in this context and provide appropriate feedback to applications. The credit accounting mechanism is necessary to ensure the overall stability of the system by assigning value to credits.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Subjects: Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
• Colleges/Schools: College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
• Supervisor's Name: McAuley, Prof. Derek, Black, Dr. Richard and Dickman, Dr. Peter
• Date of Award: 2003
• Depositing User: Angi Shields
• Unique ID: glathesis:2003-4118
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 18 Mar 2013 11:49
• Last Modified: 18 Mar 2013 11:49
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/4118