CSC/ECE 506 Fall 2007/wiki4 5 1008

Helper Threads

A helper thread is a thread that will do some of the work in advance of the main thread. This is also called pseudo-parallelization. There are several types of helper threads, these include parallel,sequntial, and slipsteam processing on CMPs. The slipstream method was developed here at NCSU.

Types of Helper threads

Parallel
A parallel helper thread runs on the same code as the main thread. These can be constructed simply because they run on the same code as the main thread however, they do add complexity because hardware needs to be aded in order to stop them. Sequntial

Slipstream Processing

References

A Survey of Helper threads and thier implementations: Ahern Studer, http://www.ece.rochester.edu/~mihuang/TEACHING/OLD/ECE404_SPRING03/HTsurvey.pdf
Use of Helper Threads for OS Support in the Multithreaded Embedded TriCore 2 Processor: Florian Kluge, J ̈org Mische, Sascha Uhrig, Theo Ungerer, Rafael Zalman http://www.informatik.uni-augsburg.de/de/lehrstuehle/sik/publikationen/papers/2007_rtas-wip_klu/rtas2007wip-kluge-final.pdf
Helper Threads via Virtual Multithreading On An Experimental Itanium 2 Processor-based Platform: Perry H. Wang, Jamison D. Collins, Hong Wang, Dongkeun Kim, Bill Greene, Kai-Ming Chan, Aamir B. Yunus, Terry Sych, Stephen F. Moore, and John P. Shen http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1030000/1024411/p144-wang.pdfkey1=1024411&key2=1477195911&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=15151515&CFTOKEN=6184618
Slipstream Execution Mode for CMP-Based Multiprocessors: Khaled Z. Ibrahim, Gregory T. Byrd, and Eric Rotenberg http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~gupta/hpca9/HPCA-PDFs/17-ibrahim.pdf

A helper thread is a thread that does some of the work of the main thread in advance of the main thread so that the main thread can work more quickly. The Olukotun text only scratches the surface on all the different ways that helper threads can be used. Survey these ways, making sure to include the Slipstream approach developed at NCSU.