Operating System - Process Scheduling
Operating System - Process Scheduling
Definition
The process scheduling is the activity of the process manager that handles the removal
of the running process from the CPU and the selection of another process on the basis
of a particular strategy.
Categories of Scheduling
There are two categories of scheduling:
. Non-preemptive: Here the resource can’t be taken from a process until the process
completes execution. The switching of resources occurs when the running process
terminates and moves to a waiting state.
. Preemptive: Here the OS allocates the resources to a process for a fixed amount of
time. During resource allocation, the process switches from running state to ready state
or from waiting state to ready state. This switching occurs as the CPU may give priority
to other processes and replace the process with higher priority with the running
process.
The Operating System maintains the following important process scheduling queues −
Job queue − This queue keeps all the processes in the system.
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Ready queue − This queue keeps a set of all processes residing in main memory,
ready and waiting to execute. A new process is always put in this queue.
Device queues − The processes which are blocked due to unavailability of an I/O
device constitute this queue.
The OS can use different policies to manage each queue (FIFO, Round Robin, Priority,
etc.). The OS scheduler determines how to move processes between the ready and run
queues which can only have one entry per processor core on the system; in the above
diagram, it has been merged with the CPU.
Schedulers
Schedulers are special system software which handle process scheduling in various
ways. Their main task is to select the jobs to be submitted into the system and to
decide which process to run. Schedulers are of three types −
Long-Term Scheduler
Short-Term Scheduler
Medium-Term Scheduler
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The primary objective of the job scheduler is to provide a balanced mix of jobs, such as
I/O bound and processor bound. It also controls the degree of multiprogramming. If the
degree of multiprogramming is stable, then the average rate of process creation must
be equal to the average departure rate of processes leaving the system.
On some systems, the long-term scheduler may not be available or minimal. Time-
sharing operating systems have no long term scheduler. When a process changes the
state from new to ready, then there is use of long-term scheduler.
Short-term schedulers, also known as dispatchers, make the decision of which process
to execute next. Short-term schedulers are faster than long-term schedulers.
Context Switching
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A context switching is the mechanism to store and restore the state or context of a CPU
in Process Control block so that a process execution can be resumed from the same
point at a later time. Using this technique, a context switcher enables multiple
processes to share a single CPU. Context switching is an essential part of a multitasking
operating system features.
When the scheduler switches the CPU from executing one process to execute another,
the state from the current running process is stored into the process control block.
After this, the state for the process to run next is loaded from its own PCB and used to
set the PC, registers, etc. At that point, the second process can start executing.
Context switches are computationally intensive since register and memory state must
be saved and restored. To avoid the amount of context switching time, some hardware
systems employ two or more sets of processor registers. When the process is switched,
the following information is stored for later use.
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Program Counter
Scheduling information
Accounting information
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