International Business Machines Corporation

John H Eilert

Jeffrey Alan Frey

James H Warnes

Arthur L Levin

Thomas Julian

Yih-shin Tan

A method for dynamically assigning and removing task affinity for a resource is disclosed and claimed. A first interrupt handler recognizes a special task interrupt condition which is generated by the hardware. The interrupt condition is generated because a task attempted to execute a special instruction and either a special resource is attached to the central processing unit which issued the special instruction, or a special resource is not attached to the issuing central processing unit, but could be attached to another central processing unit in a central electronic complex. The first interrupt handler then passes control to a second interrupt handler which determines if execution of the current task can continue. If it can, the second interrupt handler creates or reestablishes a special environment and the task is dispatched (either for the first time or again) with a special dynamic affinity to only those central processing units in the central electronic complex that have a special resource attached. Due to the assignment of special affinity the task is dispatched only on a central processing unit with a special resource attached. The task can be suspended and special affinity removed because of non-use of the special resource over a predetermined period of time. Special affinity is automatically determined following a first-issued special instruction as well as one issued by a task whose special affinity was previously suspended.

Dynamic assignment of affinity for vector tasks

The disclosure provides an embedded hardware/software monitor for a data processing system. It embeds and distributes a plurality of instrumentation table units (ITUs) within various hardware entities in the system to collect sampled hardware signals local in the hardware entity in which the respective ITU is embedded, e.g. in each CPU, I/O processor, system controller, main storage controller, etc. Instrumentation measurement is controlled centrally in the system. Sampling of the system signals is done periodically at a low-rate relative to the CPU machine cycle rate, and the sampled signal are collected in the ITUs for instrumentation analysis. Sampling pulses are synchronously provided in all ITUs in the system. The ITU collected hardware signals are related to software controlled trace entries made in a trace table (TT) in main storage by each CPU in the system executing tracing and other predetermined instructions. An asynchronous relationship between the TT entries and the ITU entries is bridged by the intervening table, called SAT, located in storage. The SAT entries receive time-of-day (TOD) values also found in associated TT entries to relate them.

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Wappingers Falls, NY, United States of America

John H Eilert