Recitation – Final Week

Disk Scheduling

Pranut Jain
 Plan for Today
• Quiz 3 discussion
• Disk arm scheduling algorithms

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 Moving-head Disk Mechanism

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 Elements of File Management

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 Disk Scheduling (1)
• The operating system is responsible for using
hardware efficiently — for the disk drives, this means
having a fast access time and disk bandwidth.
• Access time has two major components:
– Seek time is the time for the disk are to move the heads to
the cylinder containing the desired sector.
– Rotational latency is the additional time waiting for the disk
to rotate the desired sector to the disk head.
• Minimize seek time  seek distance.
• Disk bandwidth is the total number of bytes
transferred, divided by the total time between the first
request for service and the completion of last transfer.
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 Components of Disk I/O Transfer

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 Disk Scheduling (2)
• There are many sources of disk I/O request:
– OS
– System processes
– Users processes
• I/O request includes input/output mode, disk address,
memory address, number of sectors to transfer.
• OS maintains queue of requests, per disk or device.
• Idle disk can immediately work on I/O request, busy
disk means work must queue:
– Optimization algorithms only make sense when a queue
exists.
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 Disk Structure
• Disk drives are addressed as large
1-dimensional arrays of logical blocks, where
the logical block is the smallest unit of transfer.
• The 1-dimensional array of logical blocks is
mapped into the sectors of the disk sequentially:
– Sector 0 is the first sector of the first track on the
outermost cylinder.
– Mapping proceeds in order through that track, then
the rest of the tracks in that cylinder, and then
through the rest of the cylinders from outermost to
innermost.
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 Disk Scheduling Algorithms
• Note that drive controllers have small buffers and can
manage a queue of I/O requests (of varying “depth”).
• Several algorithms exist to schedule the servicing of
disk I/O requests.
• The analysis is true for one or many platters.
• We illustrate them with a I/O request queue
(cylinders are between 0-199):

queue = 98, 183, 37, 122, 14, 124, 65, 67

head starts at 53
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 First Come First Serve (FCFS) Example

Illustration shows total head movement of 640 cylinders.

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 First Come First Serve (FCFS)

• Handle I/O requests sequentially.

• Fair to all processes.
• Approaches random scheduling in
performance if there are many
processes/requests.
• Suffers from global zigzag effect.

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 Shortest Seek Time First (SSTF) Example

Illustration shows total head movement of 236 cylinders.

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 Shortest Seek Time First (SSTF)
• Selects the request with the minimum seek time
from the current head position.
• Also called Shortest Seek Distance First
(SSDF) – It’s easier to compute distances.
• It’s biased in favor of the middle cylinders
requests.
• SSTF scheduling is a form of SJF scheduling;
may cause starvation of some requests.

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 Elevator Algorithms
• Algorithms based on the common elevator principle.
• Four combinations of Elevator algorithms:
– Service in both directions or in only one direction.
– Go until last cylinder or until last I/O request.

Go until Go until the Go until the

Direction last cylinder last request
Service both
directions Scan Look
Service in only
one directionA. FrankC-Scan
C-Look
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 Scan Example

Illustration shows total head movement of 208 cylinders.

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 Scan
• The disk arm starts at one end of the disk, and
moves toward the other end, servicing requests
until it gets to the other end of the disk, where
the head movement is reversed and servicing
continues.
• It moves in both directions until both ends.
• Tends to stay more at the ends so more fair to
the extreme cylinder requests.

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 Look
• The disk arm starts at the first I/O request on
the disk, and moves toward the last I/O request
on the other end, servicing requests until it gets
to the other extreme I/O request on the disk,
where the head movement is reversed and
servicing continues.
• It moves in both directions until both last I/O
requests; more inclined to serve the middle
cylinder requests.
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 C-Scan Example

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 C-Scan
• The head moves from one end of the disk to the
other, servicing requests as it goes. When it
reaches the other end, however, it immediately
returns to the beginning of the disk, without
servicing any requests on the return trip.
• Treats the cylinders as a circular list that wraps
around from the last cylinder to the first one.
• Provides a more uniform wait time than SCAN;
it treats all cylinders in the same manner.
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 C-Look Example

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 C-Look
• Look version of C-Scan.
• Arm only goes as far as the last request in each
direction, then reverses direction immediately,
without first going all the way to the end of the
disk.
• In general, Circular versions are more fair but
pay with a larger total seek time.
• Scan versions have a larger total seek time than
the corresponding Look versions.
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 Another Example
LOOK C-LOOK

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 Graphs for previous example

LOOK

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C-LOOK
 Other Disk Scheduling Policies
• Pickup
– A combination of FCFS and Look.
– Goes to next I/O request by FCFS but services all
existing requests on the way to it.
• Priority
– Goal is not to optimize disk use but to meet other
objectives.
– Short batch jobs may have higher priority.
– Provide good interactive response time.
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 Scan Algorithm Variations
• FScan
– Use two queues.
– One queue is empty to receive new requests.
• N-step-Scan
– Segments the disk request queue into
subqueues of length N.
– Subqueues are processed one at a time, using
Scan.
– New requests added to other queue when a
certain queue is processed.
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 Selecting a Disk-Scheduling Algorithm (1)
• Performance depends on the number and types
of requests.
• Requests for disk service can be influenced by
the file-allocation method.
• The disk-scheduling algorithm should be
written as a separate module of the operating
system, allowing it to be replaced with a
different algorithm if necessary.

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 Selecting a Disk-Scheduling Algorithm (2)
• With low load on the disk, It’s FCFS anyway.
• SSTF is common and has a natural appeal – good for
medium disk load.
• SCAN and C-SCAN perform better for systems that
place a heavy load on the disk; Less starvation.
• Performance depends on number and types of requests.
• Requests for disk service can be influenced by the file-
allocation method and metadata layout.
• Either SSTF or LOOK (as part of an Elevator package)
is a reasonable choice for the default algorithm.
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