Agile Development of Linux Schedulers with Ekiben

TL;DR

Ekiben is a Rust-based framework that enables rapid, safe development and live testing of Linux kernel schedulers, maintaining high performance and supporting diverse research algorithms.

Contribution

Introduces Ekiben, a novel framework for high-velocity, safe development and live deployment of Linux schedulers in Rust, with broad research support.

Findings

Ekiben schedulers achieve near-identical performance to Linux CFS.

Supports live upgrade, debugging, and communication with applications.

Successfully implements various research schedulers with good performance.

Abstract

Kernel task scheduling is important for application performance, adaptability to new hardware, and complex user requirements. However, developing, testing, and debugging new scheduling algorithms in Linux, the most widely used cloud operating system, is slow and difficult. We developed Ekiben, a framework for high velocity development of Linux kernel schedulers. Ekiben schedulers are written in safe Rust, and the system supports live upgrade of new scheduling policies into the kernel, userspace debugging, and bidirectional communication with applications. A scheduler implemented with Ekiben achieved near identical performance (within 1% on average) to the default Linux scheduler CFS on a wide range of benchmarks. Ekiben is also able to support a range of research schedulers, specifically the Shinjuku scheduler, a locality aware scheduler, and the Arachne core arbiter, with good performance.