CAT at Scale: Deploying Cache Isolation in a Mixed Workload Environment - Rohit Jnagal & David Lo, Google

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Presented at LinuxCon 2016 by

Rohit Jnagal

David Lo

Intel introduced cache allocation technology (CAT) that allows partitioning of last-level cache to provide better micro-architectural isolation. Google deployed CAT using intel_rdt cgroup for mixed workloads in Borg. We experimented with various partitioning techniques for different workloads to get better performance and higher utilization. Preventing batch tasks from affecting latency-sensitive tasks performance through static cache partitioning providing significant performance boost. Additionally, highly latency-sensitive tasks could reduce their footprint and share better when provided exclusive cache access. In this talk, Rohit and David will cover the motivation for each use-case, describe pre-CAT strategies for interference in Borg, share CAT experiment results and performance/efficiency gains seen in production, interesting problems, and future work for isolation in Borg.