Yes, there is. You want to create two cpusets, one with your isolated CPU and the other with all the rest of the CPUs. Assign your special process to the isolated cpuset and all the rest of the processes to the other cpuset.
Here is a simple example script that will do it:
mkdir /cpuset
mount -t cpuset none /cpuset/
cd /cpuset
mkdir sys # create sub-cpuset for system processes
/bin/echo 0-2 > sys/cpuset.cpus # assign cpus (cores) 0-2 to this set
# adjust if you have more/less cores
/bin/echo 1 > sys/cpuset.cpu_exclusive
/bin/echo 0 > sys/cpuset.mems
mkdir rt # create sub-cpuset for my process
/bin/echo 3 > rt/cpuset.cpus # assign cpu (core) 3 to this cpuset
# adjust this to number of cores-1
/bin/echo 1 > rt/cpuset.cpu_exclusive
/bin/echo 0 > rt/cpuset.mems
/bin/echo 0 > rt/cpuset.sched_load_balance
/bin/echo 1 > rt/cpuset.mem_hardwall
# move all processes from the default cpuset to the sys-cpuset
for T in `cat tasks`; do echo "Moving " $T; /bin/echo $T > sys/tasks; done
Now start your process and find out its PID and go:
/bin/echo $PID > /cpuset/rt/tasks
If you want to revert these changes, just restart your system or do:
# move tasks back from sys-cpuset to root cpuset
for T in `cat /cpuset/sys/tasks`; do echo "Moving " $T; /bin/echo $T > /cpuset/tasks; done
# remove sys-cpuset
rmdir /cpuset/sys
# move tasks back from rt-cpuset to root cpuset
for T in `cat /cpuset/rt/tasks`; do echo "Moving " $T; /bin/echo $T > /cpuset/tasks; done
# remove rt-cpuset
rmdir /cpuset/rt
# unmount and remove /cpuset
umount /cpuset
rmdir /cpuset
Here is the man page: http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/online/pages/man7/cpuset.7.html
There are also more complicated shell wrappers that can help you automate this, such as cset. See: http://web.archive.org/web/20120428093126/http://www.suse.com/documentation/slerte_11/slerte_tutorial/data/slerte_tutorial.html
