Automatic Analytical Cloud Scaling of Hardware Using Resource Sub-Cloud

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2016306678-A1
Application number	US-201514729177-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Jun 3, 2015
Priority date	Apr 14, 2015
Publication date	Oct 20, 2016
Grant date	—

Abstract

Mechanisms are provided, in a data processing system comprising a primary system-on-a-chip (SOC) and a pool of SOCs, for processing a workload. The data processing system receives a cloud computing workload submitted and allocates the cloud computing workload to the primary SOC. An analytics monitor of the data processing system monitors a bus of the data processing system for at least one first signal indicative of an overloaded condition of the primary SOC. A Power, Reset, and Clocking (PRC) hardware block powers-up one or more auxiliary SOCs in the pool of SOCs in response to the analytics monitor detecting the at least one first signal. The workload is then distributed across the primary SOC and the one or more auxiliary SOCs in response to powering-up the one or more SOCs. The workload is then executed by the primary SOC and the one or more SOCs.

First claim

1 . A method, in a data processing system comprising a primary system-on-a-chip (SOC) and a pool of SOCs, for processing a workload, the method comprising:
receiving, by the data processing system, a cloud computing workload submitted to a cloud computing system with which the data processing system is associated; allocating, by the data processing system, the cloud computing workload to the primary SOC; monitoring, by an analytics monitor of the data processing system, a bus of the data processing system for at least one first signal indicative of an overloaded condition of the primary SOC; powering-up, by a Power, Reset, and Clocking (PRC) hardware block, one or more auxiliary SOCs in the pool of SOCs in response to the analytics monitor detecting the at least one first signal; distributing the workload across the primary SOC and the one or more auxiliary SOCs in response to powering-up the one or more SOCs; and executing the workload by the primary SOC and the one or more SOCs.

2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein allocating the cloud computing workload to the primary SOC comprises storing the cloud computing workload in a shared memory of the pool of SOCs, and wherein each SOC in the pool of SOCs shares the shared memory to thereby maintain coherency of the cloud computing workload.

3 . The method of claim 1 , wherein monitoring the bus of the data processing system comprises monitoring signaling pins of the one or more auxiliary SOCs in the pool of SOCs for signals transmitted by internal performance monitors of the one or more auxiliary SOCs.

4 . The method of claim 2 , wherein monitoring the bus of the data processing system for at least one first signal indicative of an overloaded condition of the primary SOC comprises monitoring the bus for a pattern of first signals comprising signals indicative of at least one of a number of read operations within a predetermined time period, a number of write operations to the shared memory occurring within the predetermined time period, or occurrence of one or more rearbitration signals.

5 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
transmitting, by the analytics monitor, an interrupt to the PRC hardware block in response to the analytics monitor detecting the at least one first signal indicative of an overloaded condition of the primary SOC, wherein the powering-up of the one or more auxiliary SOCs is performed by the PRC hardware block in response to receiving the interrupt from the analytics monitor.

6 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
monitoring, by the analytics monitor, the bus of the data processing system for at least one second signal indicative of an underloaded condition of one or more of the auxiliary SOCs; and powering-down, by the PRC hardware block, at least one of the one or more auxiliary SOCs in response to the analytics monitor detecting the at least one second signal.

7 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the cloud computing system executes a plurality of workloads, and wherein the method further comprises:
predicting which workloads of the plurality of workloads are likely to result in an overloaded condition of the cloud computing system; and in response to results of the predicting, pre-loading one or more of the SOCs in the pool of SOCs with one of a system image or a SOC image corresponding to workloads predicted to be likely to result in an overloaded condition of the cloud computing system.

8 . The method of claim 7 , wherein the workloads comprise an SOC image for offloading the workload to one or more SOCs of the pool of the SOCs, and wherein pre-loading one or more of the SOCs in the pool of SOCs comprises pre-loading the SOC with an SOC image corresponding to the workloads predicted to be likely to result in an overloaded condition of the cloud computing system.

9 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the cloud computing workload is a security workload for handling encryption/decryption of data traffic to and from the cloud computing system.

10 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the primary SOC is a SOC in the pool of SOCs that remains powered-up while other SOCs in the pool of SOCs are placed in a low power consumption state, and is initially loaded with workloads when they are submitted to the data processing system prior to other SOCs in the pool of SOCs.

11 - 20 . (canceled)

Assignees

• Globalfoundries Inc

Inventors

• Hira Kalpesh
• Hoy Jeffrey R
• Milman Ivan M

Classifications

• G06F9/5083 Primary

  Techniques for rebalancing the load in a distributed system · CPC title

• G06F9/5011

  the resources being hardware resources other than CPUs, Servers and Terminals · CPC title

• G06F2209/5022

  Workload threshold · CPC title