Utilization-aware load balancing for the energy efficient operation of the big.LITTLE processor

Abstract

ARM's big.LITTLE architecture introduces the opportunity to optimize power consumption by selecting the core type most suitable for a level of processing demand. To take advantage of this new axis of optimization, we introduce processor utilization into the Linux kernel's load balancing algorithm. Our method improves the Linux kernel's ability to schedule tasks in an energy efficient manner without making it directly aware of the available core types. Experimental results show an energy consumption improvement over the standard Linux scheduler up to 11.35% with almost no reduction in performance.