Tag: Threading

Scheduler stories: Going Preemptive

SQLOS is built upon the idea of cooperative, AKA non-preemptive, scheduling: out of any given collection of threads belonging to a scheduler, only one will own the scheduler at a given moment. To the degree that these cooperative threads represent the only work done by the underlying CPU, this means that the thread owning the scheduler really owns the CPU. Of course, a CPU will occasionally get side-tracked into doing other work, so the SQLOS scheduler as “virtual CPU” only represents a chunk of the real CPU, but we live in the expectation that this is a suitably large chunk.

John Tenniel's White Rabbit from "Alice in Wonderland"

It is understandable when such competition for the CPU comes from outside of SQL Server, but it can also be instigated from within SQL Server itself. This is the world of preemptive – or if you prefer, antisocial – scheduling.
Continue reading “Scheduler stories: Going Preemptive”

Scheduler stories: The joy of fiber mode

Probably the funniest thing I had ever seen on stage was a two-hander called “Frank ‘n Stein”. It’s a telling of the classic Frankenstein story, with the physical comedy of two actors having to rotate continuously between a large number of roles, including a whole crowd chasing the monster. This was all made possible by them never leaving the stage, but instead changing characters in front of the audience, using only rudimentary props to help differentiate the characters.

If this is the only thing you remember about fiber mode scheduling, it should see you through.
Continue reading “Scheduler stories: The joy of fiber mode”

Scheduler Stories: When does your scheduler run?

I am planning to burn a fair number of cycles on SQLOS scheduling internals for the foreseeable future, and with some luck, this turns into an interesting series. OS scheduling is already a subject that belongs “on the other side of the looking glass”, and this only gets more interesting when we look at user-mode SOS_Scheduler scheduling built on top of it.

If I don’t specifically mention a version, my frame of reference is SQL Server 2014. Yes, things changed since then, but the 2012-2014 scheduler is a good starting point, and the fundamental mechanisms I’ll initially cover have changed very little since the User Mode Scheduler (UMS) of SQL Server 7.0.
Continue reading “Scheduler Stories: When does your scheduler run?”

The Thread in the Head: Dr Sqlos explains context switching

The thread in the head

Oh, the things you can schedule,
the games you can play!
If you keep a clear head, you’ll
be well on your way.

You start with a blank sheet,
three nuts and a bolt,
a strong sense of fairness,
a large can of Jolt.
Continue reading “The Thread in the Head: Dr Sqlos explains context switching”

King Arthur, Energizer bunnies, and the search for the SQLOS scheduler

ARTHUR: Who lives in that castle?
WOMAN: No one lives there.
ARTHUR: Then who is your lord?
WOMAN: We don’t have a lord.
ARTHUR: What?
DENNIS: I told you. We’re an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.

(from Monty Python and the Holy Grail)

Yeah, whatever. I want to hear about bunnies

Picture a world consisting of forty Energizer bunnies, grouped into four teams of ten. Each team has one battery between them, and the main rule of the game is that each bunny may only use the battery for a little while before transferring it to a teammate. There is no way for a sleeping player to be woken up except by being passed the battery, and each battery strictly stays within one team.
Continue reading “King Arthur, Energizer bunnies, and the search for the SQLOS scheduler”

Threading for humans

I used to think of threading as a complicated subject that everybody except me had a grip on. Turns out that it’s actually simple stuff with complicated repercussions, and no, many people don’t really get it, so I was in good company all along. Because I’m heading into some SQLOS thread internals, this is a good time to take stock and revisit a few fundamentals. This will be an idiosyncratic explanation, and one that ignores many complexities inside the black box – CPU internals, the added abstraction of a hypervisor, and programming constructs like thread pooling and tasks – for the sake of focusing on functionality directly exposed to the lower levels of software.
Continue reading “Threading for humans”