Determining a computing capacity of one of a physical or a virtual machine

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10133605-B2
Application number	US-201615261921-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Sep 10, 2016
Priority date	Sep 11, 2015
Publication date	Nov 20, 2018
Grant date	Nov 20, 2018

Abstract

The estimation of a computing capacity of a machine. The computing capacity is estimated by iteratively adding and removing calibrated computer processes on the machine, and performing a sum of computing loads of processes that execute on the machine. In order to characterize the ability of a machine to run in parallel a number of processes having a defined computing load, the processes are associated to a condition of success.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing one or more sequences of instructions for estimating a computing capacity of a computing machine, said computing machine being one of a physical computing machine, a virtual computing machine, or a partition of either said physical computing machine or said virtual computing machine, wherein execution of the one or more sequences of instructions by one or more processors cause:
executing a number of calibrated computer processes on the computing machine, wherein each of the calibrated computer processes has a calibrated computing load defined by one or more of a CPU load, a memory load, or a bandwidth load, and wherein each calibrated computing load has a number of values;
determining whether an output of the computing machine meets or exceeds a performance threshold defined by one or more of (a) a video quality parameter of the output and (b) a latency parameter between an input into the computing machine and an output from the computing machine;
iteratively adding or removing a calibrated computer process of a selected value in the number of values of a calibrated computer load until a stop criterion defined by a required level of precision is achieved; and
calculating the computing capacity of the computing machine as a sum of the calibrated computer loads of the calibrated computer processes executing on the computing machine when the stop criterion is achieved.

2. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1 , wherein the stop criterion is determined to be achieved when (a) at least one process output of a particular calibrated computer process does not match or is better than a performance threshold after adding a calibrated computer process having a computer load equal or lower than a threshold computer load, or (b) each process output of each calibrated computer process matches or is better than the performance threshold after removing a certain calibrated computer process having a computer load equal or lower than the threshold computer load.

3. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1 , wherein iteratively adding or removing a calibrated computer process is performed by adding or removing a plurality of different calibrated computer processes having different loads.

4. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 3 , wherein calibrated computer processes are added or removed in a decreasing order of computing loads, and wherein switching from iteratively adding or removing calibrated computer process having a calibrated computing load to iteratively a adding or removing calibrated computer process having a lower computing load is performed when a switch criterion is met.

5. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 4 , wherein the switch criteria is determined to be achieved when (a) at least one of the outputs of a calibrated computer process does not match nor is better than a performance threshold after adding a calibrated computer process, or (b) each output of each calibrated computer process matches or is better than a performance threshold after removing a calibrated computer process.

6. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1 , wherein a computing capacity is calculated for a plurality of different sets of calibrated computer processes, and the computing capacity having the minimum value amongst said calculated computing capacities is associated to the computing machine.

7. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1 , wherein execution of the one or more sequences of instructions further cause:
determining the computing load of a calibrated computer process by performing:
executing, on a reference computing machine, a number of instances of said calibrated computer process, said reference machine having a reference computing capacity,
determining whether an output of the reference computing machine matches or is better than a performance threshold defined by one or more of (a) a video quality parameter of the output and (b) a latency parameter between an input into the computing machine and an output from the computing machine,
iteratively adding or removing an instance of the calibrated computer process of a selected value in the number of values of a calibrated computer load until a stop criterion is achieved, and
calculating the computing load of the calibrated computer process as the reference computing capacity divided by the number of instances of the calibrated computer processes running on the reference computing machine when the stop criteria is achieved.

8. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1 , wherein at least one of the calibrated computer processes is a multimedia computer process.

9. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 8 , wherein said at least one calibrated computer process is a process for performing one of: video compression, audio compression, DRM application, filtering, packaging, and video pre-processing.

10. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 8 , wherein at least two of the calibrated processes are multimedia processes for performing a same multimedia task on two different sets of input data.

11. An apparatus for estimating a computing capacity of a computing machine, said computing machine being one of a physical computing machine, a virtual computing machine, or a partition of either said physical computing machine or said virtual computing machine, comprising:
one or more processors; and
one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage mediums storing one or more sequences of instructions, which when executed, cause:
executing a number of calibrated computer processes on the computing machine, wherein each of the calibrated computer processes has a calibrated computing load defined by one or more of a CPU load, a memory load, or a bandwidth load, and wherein each calibrated computing load has a number of values;
determining whether an output of the computing machine meets or exceeds a performance threshold defined by one or more of (a) a video quality parameter of the output and (b) a latency parameter between an input into the computing machine and an output from the computing machine;
iteratively adding or removing a calibrated computer process of a selected value in the number of values of a calibrated computer load until a stop criterion defined by a required level of precision is achieved; and
calculating the computing capacity of the computing machine as a sum of the calibrated computer loads of the calibrated computer processes executing on the computing machine when the stop criterion is achieved.

12. The apparatus of claim 11 , wherein the stop criterion is determined to be achieved when (a) at least one process output of a particular calibrated computer process does not match or is better than a performance threshold after adding a calibrated computer process having a computer load equal or lower than a threshold computer load, or (b) each process output of each calibrated computer process matches or is better than the performance threshold after removing a certain calibrated computer process having a computer load equal or lower than the threshold computer load.

13. The apparatus of claim 11 , wherein iteratively adding or removing a calibrated computer process is performed by adding or removing a plurality of different calibrated computer processes having different loads.

14. The apparatus of claim 13 , wherein calibrated computer processes are added or removed in a decreasing order of computing loads, a

Assignees

• Harmonic Inc

Inventors

• Le Bars Eric
• Mahe Arnaud
• Berthelot Christophe
• Henry David

Classifications

• G06F2209/5022

  Workload threshold · CPC title

• G06F2209/501

  Performance criteria · CPC title

• G06F2201/81

  Threshold · CPC title

• G06F2201/815

  Virtual · CPC title

• G06F2201/805

  Real-time · CPC title