OS Scheduling Algorithms Caroline Cahill

Contents
Scheduling Techniques .............................................................................................................. 1

Single CPU Scheduling Algorithms .......................................................................................... 3

1) First-Come-First-Served (FCFS)................................................................................. 3

2) Shortest Job Next (SJN) .............................................................................................. 4

3) Shortest Remaining Time (SRT) ................................................................................. 5

4) Priority Scheduling...................................................................................................... 5

5) Round Robin (RR) ...................................................................................................... 6

Variants of Round Robbin ................................................................................................. 7

Multilevel CPU Scheduling Algorithms .................................................................................... 8

6) Multilevel Queue Scheduling ...................................................................................... 8

7) Multilevel Feedback Queue Scheduling ................................................................... 10

Windows Scheduling ............................................................................................................... 11

Scheduling Techniques
The process scheduler makes critical decisions many times every second. An efficient
scheduling system will select a good process mix of CPU-bound processes and I/O bound
processes. When more than one process is ready to run, the OS must decide which one first.
The part of the operating system concerned with this decision is called the scheduler, and
algorithm it uses is called the scheduling algorithm.

The Scheduling algorithms can be divided into two categories with respect to how they deal
with clock interrupts and can be either:

1. preemptive or
2. non-preemptive.

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1. Preemptive scheduling - enables the low level scheduler to remove a process from
the RUNNING state in order to allow another process to run.
The strategy of allowing processes that are logically runable to be temporarily
suspended is called Preemptive Scheduling and it is contrast to the "run to
completion" method.
2. Nonpreemptive Scheduling - A scheduling discipline is nonpreemptive if, once a
process has been given the CPU, the CPU cannot be taken away from that process
("run to completion").

In nonpreemptive, the CPU scheduling decisions may take place when a process:

 Switches from running to waiting state

 Switches from running to ready state
 Switches from waiting to ready state
 Terminates
They are policies that allow the process to run until it terminates or incurs an I/O wait.
 short jobs are made to wait by longer jobs but the overall treatment of all
processes is fair.
 response times are more predictable because incoming high priority jobs can
not displace waiting jobs.

A scheduler executes jobs in the following two situations:

(1) When a process switches from running state to the waiting state.
(2) When a process terminates.

Figure 1 - Process States and State Transitions

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Single CPU Scheduling Algorithms

A selection of low level scheduling policies are as follows:
 FCFS Scheduling.
 SJN Scheduling.
 Round Robin Scheduling.
 Priority Scheduling.

1) First-Come-First-Served (FCFS)

Also known as First In First Out (FIFO),

Run-to-Completion, or Run-Until-Done,
this policy simply assigns the processor to
the process that is first in the READY
queue – i.e. the one that has been waiting
for the longest time.

This is a non-preemptive scheme, since it occurs only when the current process relinquishes
control, hence the name “Run-Until-Done”.

Advantages:
The code for FCFS scheduling is simple to write and understand - FCFS algorithm doesn't
include any complex logic, it just puts the process requests in a queue and executes it one by
one.
FCFS is more predictable than most of other schemes since it offers time.
Every process will get a chance to run, so process starvation – where a process is “starved”
of CPU access doesn't occur.
Disadvantages:

 This method can be unfair to short jobs (long jobs make short jobs wait and unimportant
jobs make important jobs wait)

 If a CPU-bound process gets the processor, it could run for long periods of time while the

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READY queue grows. There is no option for pre-emption of a process. If a process is

started, then CPU executes the process until it ends

 FCFS scheme is not useful in scheduling interactive users because it cannot guarantee
good response time

FCFS is rarely used as a master scheme in modern operating systems but it is often
embedded within other schemes.

Please NOTE: go to lab section for FCFS examples

Variant of this is Last In First Out

The job that arrives last is serviced first but other characteristics remain as the FCFS
algorithm.

2) Shortest Job Next (SJN)

Also called Shortest Job First (SJF) is non-preemptive policy selects from the READY
queue the process that has the shortest estimated run time. When CPU is available, it is
assigned to the process that has smallest next CPU burst. Short jobs will effectively jump past
longer jobs in the queue.

SJN is especially appropriate for batch jobs for which the run times are known in advance - In
the production environment where the same jobs run regularly, it may be possible to provide
reasonable estimate of run time, based on the past performance of the process. But in the
development environment users rarely know how their program will execute.

In SJN scheme, once a job begin executing, it run to completion.

In SJN scheme, a running process may be preempted by a new arrival process with shortest
estimated run-time.

The throughput is increased because more processes can be executed in less amount of time.

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SJN is non preemptive therefore, it is not useful in timesharing environment in which

reasonable response time must be guaranteed.

Disadvantage:
A long job may be delayed indefinitely by a succession of short jobs overtaking it. Therefore
longer processes will have more waiting time, eventually they'll suffer process starvation.

3) Shortest Remaining Time (SRT)

SRT is a preemptive counterpart of SJN and is useful in time-sharing environment

The process with the smallest estimated run-time to completion is run next, including new
arrivals.

SRT has higher overhead than its counterpart SJN.

SRT must keep track of the elapsed time of the running process and must handle occasional
preemptions.

Arrival of small processes will run almost immediately. However, one big disadvantage is that
longer jobs remain for longer in the READY queue and have even longer mean waiting time.

Say process A is in its RUNNING state and meanwhile process B arrives in the READY
queue. If process B’s running time is shorter than process A’s remaining run-time, then
process A will be put back to the READY state and process B will be put into RUNNING
state.

4) Priority Scheduling
The SJN algorithm is a special case of the general priority scheduling algorithm

A priority number (integer) is associated with each process and this Priority can be decided
based on memory requirements, time requirements or any other resource requirement

The CPU is allocated to the process with the

- highest priority (smallest integer = highest priority) are executed first

- Same priority are executed in FCFS manner

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Priority scheduling can be either preemptive or non-preemptive

 A preemptive approach will preempt the CPU if the priority of the newly-arrived
process is higher than the priority of the currently running process
 A non-preemptive approach will simply put the new process (with the highest priority)
at the head of the ready queue

SJN is a priority scheduling algorithm where priority is the predicted next CPU burst time

The main problem with priority scheduling is starvation, that is, low priority processes may
never execute

A solution is aging; as time progresses, the priority of a process in the ready queue is increased

5) Round Robin (RR)

One of the oldest, simplest, fairest and most widely used algorithm is round robin (RR) in
which context switches are performed (to save states of preempted processes.)

In the round robin scheduling, processes are dispatched in a FCFS manner but are given a
limited amount of CPU time called a time-slice or a quantum, therefore process starvation
cannot occur.
In the Round Robin scheme, a process is selected for RUNNING from the READY
queue in FIFO (FCFS) sequence.
However, if the process runs beyond a certain fixed length of time, called a time
quantum and its CPU time expires, the CPU is preempted and given to the next
process waiting in a queue. The preempted process is then placed at the back of the
ready list
In other words, the processor works on the process for a fixed amount of time (its time
slice) before it terminates or returns back to the end of the READY queue.

The RR scheme is essentially the preemptive (at the end of the time slice) version of FCFS,
but processes are only interrupted at the expiry of the time quantum, which is the key
parameter of this scheduling algorithm
Therefore it is effective in time-sharing environments in which the system needs to guarantee
reasonable response times for interactive users

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READY QUEUE
DISPATCH
CPU

TIMEOUT

Setting the quantum too short causes too many context switches and lower the CPU
efficiency. On the other hand, setting the quantum too long may cause poor response time
and approximates FCFS.

Variants of Round Robbin

 Cyclic RR
Just like normal round robin except that the quantum is:
q=Q/n
where n is total number processes waiting and
Q is a time chunk
Basic Characteristics of cyclic RR are that there is graceful degradation, low-switching
overhead.
It performs very similarly to Round Robin

For the above example, the number of processes in the Queue are 5, so each CPU burst will be
Q/5.

 State dependent RR
Same as RR but q is varied dynamically depending on the state of the system.
It favours processes holding important resources, for example, non-swappable memory.
Perhaps this should be considered medium term scheduling since q is not recalculated each
time

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 Selfish-RR
With this there are two classes of jobs (NEW, ACCEPTED).
When priority of a processes changes from NEW to ACCEPTED, it is moved to ACCEPTED
and these ACCEPTED processes are allocated CPU time.
Its basic characteristics and performance is similar to RR.

Multilevel CPU Scheduling Algorithms

 Multilevel Queue Scheduling.
 Multilevel Feedback Queue Scheduling.

6) Multilevel Queue Scheduling

This algorithm partitions the ready queue in several separate queues and processes are
permanently assigned to one queues. It is a common practice to associate some priority
depending upon where the process may have or originated. For instance, systems programs
may have a higher priority over the user programs.

Within the users there may be level of importance:

- In an on-line system the priority may be determined by the criticality of the source or
destination. In such a case, an OS may maintain many process queues, one for each
level of priority.
- In a real-time system we may even follow an earliest deadline first schedule.

This policy introduces a notion priority on the basis of the deadline.

The processes are permanently assigned to one another, based on some property of the process,
such as

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 Memory size
 Process priority
 Process type

Algorithm choose the process from the occupied queue that has the highest priority, and run
that process either preemptive or non-preemptively

Each queue has its own scheduling algorithm or policy. For example:

 System process has the highest priority. If an interrupt is generated in the system, then
the Operating system stops all the processes and handle the interrupt. According to
different response time requirements, process needs different scheduling algorithm.
 Interactive process has medium priority. If we are using VLC player, we directly
interact with the application. So all these processes will come in an interactive process.
These queues will use scheduling algorithm according to requirement.
 Batch processes has the lowest priority. The processes which run automatically in the
background comes under the batch processes. It is also known as background processes.

Therefore, according to process priority and type, the processes are scheduled with different
scheduling algorithm.

Problem in Multilevel Queue Scheduling

These processes can’t move across the queues.

 Running process can be preempted from a low priority queue when process arrives at
high priority queue. Scheduling can lead to starvation.

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 If dynamically process is entering in system queue, then other processes are lead to
starvation. Since we have scheduled the process queue as high priority and low priority,
neither process can jump across the queue nor process can switch over.

These disadvantages are overcome by multilevel feedback queue scheduling

7) Multilevel Feedback Queue Scheduling

Process can move between the queues. It uses many READY queues and associates a different
priority with each queue, ageing can be implemented this way.

The multilevel feedback algorithm selects always the first job of the lowest queue (i.e., the
queue with the highest priority) that is not empty

Figure 2 - Eg of Multilevel Feedback Queue

A technique called Aging promotes lower priority process to the next higher priority queue
after a suitable interval of time.

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Advantages

A process that waits too long in a lower priority queue may be moved to a higher priority queue.

Disadvantages

Moving the process around queue produces more CPU overhead.

It may happen that processes in the ready queue can be divided into different classes where
each class has its own scheduling needs. For example, a common division is a foreground
(interactive) process and background (batch) processes. These two classes have different
scheduling needs. For this kind of situation Multilevel Queue Scheduling is used.

There is no universal “best” scheduling algorithm, and many operating systems use extended
or combinations of the scheduling algorithms above. For example, Windows NT/XP/Vista uses
a multilevel feedback queue, a combination of fixed-priority preemptive scheduling, round-
robin, and first in, first out algorithms.

Windows Scheduling
Windows scheduled threads using a priority-based, preemptive scheduling algorithm.

The scheduler ensures that the highest priority thread will always run.

The portion of the Windows kernel that handles scheduling is called the dispatcher to switch
the processor from one processor to another.

The dispatcher uses a 32-level priority scheme to determine the order of thread execution.

Priorities are divided into two classes.

1. The variable class contains threads having priorities 1 to 15.

2. The real-time class contains threads with priorities ranging from 16 to 31.

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There is also a thread running at priority 0 that is used for memory management.

The dispatcher uses a queue for each scheduling priority and traverses the set of queues from
highest to lowest until it finds a thread that is ready to run.

If no ready thread is found, the dispatcher will execute a special thread called the idle thread

When a user is running an interactive program, the system needs to provide especially good
performance for that process.

The priority of each thread is based on the priority class it belongs to and its relative priority
within that class.

Within each of the priority classes is a relative priority:

Depending on the usage of your Windows 10 computer, you can configure processor
scheduling, so that it gives you the best performance while using Programs or for Background
Processes You can make this adjustment easily via the Control Panel.

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The Task Scheduler in Windows 10 executes scripts or programs at specific times or after
certain events (we refer to these as triggers or conditions.)

It’s useful as a maintenance or automation tool – have a look now:

1. Navigate to the Task Scheduler and clicking on Task Scheduler Library.

2. Toward the center pane, a list of applications will appear. The majority of entries
located here relate to updating software. However, a lot of potentially unwanted
programs (PUP) store entries in this area. If you see a lot of programs that you don’t
recognise, you might want to consider running a malware scan.

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