International Business Machines Corporation

Manish Ahuja

Joel Howard Schopp

Michael Thomas Strosaker

Nathan Fontenot

Jacob Lorien Moilanen

Monty Christoph Poppe

A method, system, and computer program product for managing system resources within a data processing system. A resource management moderator (RMM) utility assigns a priority to each application within a group of management applications, facilitated by a RMM protocol. When a request for control of a particular resource is received, the RMM utility compares the priority of the requesting application with the priority of the controlling application. Control of the resource is ultimately given to the management application with the greater priority. If the resource is not under control of an application, control of the resource may be automatically granted to the requester. Additionally, the RMM utility provides support for legacy applications via a 'manager of managers' application. The RMM utility registers the 'manager of managers' application with the protocol and enables interactions (to reconfigure and enable legacy applications) between the &#x201c;manager of managers&#x201d; application and legacy applications.

System resource management moderator protocol

An expansion card is provided that allows resources allocated to the expansion card to be shared with a different card. The expansion card comprises a coupling device that couples the expansion card to a data processing system. The expansion card also includes an identifier data structure that when queried by the data processing system, identifies the expansion card as a resource sharing expansion card. The data processing system reallocates one or more resources allocated to the expansion card to a different card coupled to the data processing system.

Resource sharing expansion card

Partition migrations are scheduled between virtual partitions of a virtually partitioned data processing system. The virtually partitioned data processing system is a tickless system in which a periodic timer interrupt is not guaranteed to be sent to the processor at a defined time interval. A request is received for a partition migration. Gaps between scheduled timer interrupts are identified. The partition migration is then scheduled to occur within the largest gap.

Smart scheduling of automatic partition migration by the use of timers

A mechanism and functionality are provided for generating and using compiler optimized function variants. These variants may be used, for example, in situations where return values of functions called by code are not thereafter used by the code calling the functions. In particular, for a function called by computer code, at least two variants for the function may be generated. A function call, for calling the function, within original computer code may be analyzed to determine which variant of the at least two variants to use for the function call. The function call may be modified in the original computer code, to generate modified computer code, based on results of the analysis identifying which variant of the at least two variants to use for the function call.

Compiler optimized function variants for use when return codes are ignored

Methods and arrangements of assigning tasks to processors are discussed. Embodiments include transformations, code, state machines or other logic to detect an attempt to execute an instruction of a task on a processor not supporting the instruction (non-supporting processor). The method may involve selecting a processor supporting the instruction (supporting physical processor). In many embodiments, the method may include storing data about the attempt to execute the instruction and, based upon the data, making another assignment of the task to a physical processor supporting the instruction. In some embodiments, the method may include representing the instruction set of a virtual processor as the union of the instruction sets of the physical processors comprising the virtual processor and assigning a task to the virtual processor based upon the representing.

Assigning tasks to processors in heterogeneous multiprocessors

A partitioned NUMA machine is managed to dynamically transform its partition layout state based on NUMA considerations. The NUMA machine includes two or more NUMA nodes that are operatively interconnected by one or more internodal communication links. Each node includes one or more CPUs and associated memory circuitry. Two or more logical partitions each comprise at a CPU and memory circuit allocation on at least one NUMA node. Each partition respectively runs at least one associated data processing application. The partitions are dynamically managed at runtime to transform the distributed data processing machine from a first partition layout state to a second partition layout state that is optimized for the data processing applications according to whether a given partition will most efficiently execute within a single NUMA node or by spanning across a node boundary. The optimization is based on access latency and bandwidth in the NUMA machine.

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Pflugerville, TX, United States of America

Manish Ahuja