Self-Tuning Linux Kernels: How LLM-Driven Agents Are Reinventing Scheduler Policies

by George Whittaker Introduction Modern computing systems rely heavily on operating-system schedulers to allocate CPU time fairly and efficiently. Yet many of these schedulers operate blindly with respect to the meaning of workloads: they cannot distinguish, for example, whether a task is latency-sensitive or batch-oriented. This mismatch, between application semantics and scheduler heuristics, is often referred to as the semantic gap. A recent research framework called SchedCP aims to close that gap. By using autonomous LLM‐based agents, the system analyzes workload characteristics, selects or synthesizes custom scheduling policies, and safely deploys them into the kernel, without human intervention. This represents a meaningful step toward self-optimizing, application-aware kernels. In this article we will explore what SchedCP is, how it works under the hood, the evidence of its effectiveness, real-world implications, and what caveats remain. Why the Problem Matters At the heart of t
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