Restricting OS service and appilcation to use specific set of cores

[kiranprabhu]

Hi is there any way to restrict OS(Windows 2008 Server) services and startup applications to runon a set ofCores/Processor so that other cores are free to execute an application written by me( i am using C++/.Net). I wish to dedicate certain cores for my application.

Thanks

Kiran

[Dmitry_Vyukov]

The easiest way to achieve this is as follows.

Bind your application's threads to a subset of processors with SetProcessAffinityMask(GetCurrentProcess(), mask).

Raise priority of your process as much as possible with SetPriorityClass(GetCurrentProcess(), REALTIME_PRIORITY_CLASS);

Raise priority of all your threads as much as possible with SetThreadPriority(GetCurrentThread(), THREAD_PRIORITY_TIME_CRITICAL);

I believe this way you will occupy the processors almost entirely. OS can schedule some episodic activities on the processors anyway, but I think that's inevitable.

[iekpo]

I believe OpenMP and Intel TBB have tools that would allow you to set the affinity for a particular thread to a specific core. You should look into it.