Patent ID: 8286178

Claim:
A method of managing processing resources in a data processing system, the method comprising: a hypervisor creating a plurality of virtual processors in a logically partitioned data processing system having a plurality of logical partitions each executing a respective one of a plurality of operating system instances; allocating a respective processing resource entitlement of physical processing resources of the data processing system to each of the plurality of virtual processors; assigning at least one of the plurality of virtual processors to a workload running on an operating system instance in one of the plurality of logical partitions; determining a status of each of the plurality of virtual processors as having a capped or uncapped task load; receiving a workload request for utilization of the physical processing resources; the hypervisor determining if additional virtual processing resources in addition to the one or more virtual processors assigned to the workload are required to process the workload request; in response to determining that additional virtual processing resources are required, creating a first resource set, wherein the first resource set is a grouping of multiple of the plurality of virtual processors, wherein each virtual processor in the resource set has a respective allocated processing resource entitlement; the hypervisor dispatching one or more virtual processors of the first resource set to the workload request; determining whether the dispatched one or more virtual processors of the first resource set has exceeded its processing resource entitlement within a given virtual processor dispatch cycle based on the status of the one or more virtual processors of the first resource set as having a capped or uncapped task load; and in response to determining that the dispatched one or more virtual processors of first resource set has exceeded its processing resource entitlement, undispatching the first resource set within the given virtual processor dispatch cycle.