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Scheduler Virus

Overview

The scheduler virus is designed to lock up the GPU's command processor. The goal is not to stress the ALUs, but to force the hardware dispatcher into rapid context switching.

Execution Mechanics

It utilizes a "Micro Kernel"—a deliberately tiny workload designed to finish almost instantly.

  • The host script creates 64 independent, asynchronous streams.
  • It spams the micro-kernel across all 64 streams using only 1 Block and 64 Threads per launch.
  • This forces maximum fragmentation on the Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs) and forces hardware queues (like NVIDIA Hyper-Q or AMD ACEs) into aggressive multiplexing mode.

Target Subsystems

  • Primary Target: Hardware Schedulers and Asynchronous Compute Engines (ACEs).
  • Secondary Target: Context memory allocations.

Failure Symptoms

Expected Behavior

Performance is measured in KIPS (Thousand Kernel Issues Per Second).

Critical Failures

  • Dispatcher Lockup: The GPU scheduler physically hangs, requiring a hard reboot of the host machine.
  • Massive KIPS Drops: The driver's software queue becomes overwhelmed and stops submitting work to the hardware.