[Nottingham] Opportunistically maximising resource utilisation

[Martin]

So...

What might be the best strategy for an unprivileged low priority
application to sense and opportunistically utilise spare resource such
as idle CPU time and spare RAM and yet avoid (causing) excessive memory
swaps or a system slow-down in any way?

That is, how can you make a big resource hog really really nice and
unobtrusive for whatever system?

And also have the task gracefully kill itself if it has exceeded a
certain CPU time or clock time without completion?


For example, I'm wanting something better than just looking at 'load
average' because you can have a "high load" whilst the CPU is still 99%
idle... And "nice 19" doesn't let a process tune itself for present
conditions.

(A more 'holistic' view?)


Ideas?

Cheers,
Martin

-- 
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Martin Lomas
martin at ml1.co.uk
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