Chapter 5a: CPU Scheduling

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Chapter 5a: CPU Scheduling

 Basic Concepts
 Scheduling Criteria
 Scheduling Algorithms
 Thread Scheduling
 Multiple-Processor Scheduling
 Real-Time CPU Scheduling
 Operating Systems Examples
 Algorithm Evaluation

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 5.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Objectives

 To introduce CPU scheduling, which is the basis for

multiprogrammed operating systems
 To describe various CPU-scheduling algorithms
 To discuss evaluation criteria for selecting a CPU-scheduling
algorithm for a particular system
 To examine the scheduling algorithms of several operating
systems

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 5.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Basic Concepts

 Maximum CPU utilization

obtained with multiprogramming
 Most processes exhibit the
following behavior:
 CPU burst followed by I/O burst
 CPU–I/O Burst Cycle – Process
execution consists of a cycle of
CPU execution and I/O wait
 CPU burst distribution is of main
concern

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 5.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Histogram of CPU-burst Times

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 5.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 CPU Scheduler
 Whenever the CPU becomes idle, the operating system must
select one of the processes in the ready queue to be executed.
 The selection process is carried out by the CPU scheduler.
 The ready queue may be ordered in various ways.
 CPU scheduling decisions may take place when a process:
1. Switches from running state to waiting state
2. Switches from running state to ready state
3. Switches from waiting state to ready state
4. When a process terminates
 For situations 1 and 4, there is no choice in terms of scheduling.
A new process (if one exists in the ready queue) must be
selected for execution.
 There is a choice, however, for situations 2 and 3.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 5.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Nonpreemptive Scheduling
 When scheduling takes place only under
circumstances 1 and 4.
 Under nonpreemptive scheduling, once the CPU has
been allocated to a process, the process keeps the
CPU until it releases the CPU either by terminating or
by switching to the waiting state.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 5.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Preemptive scheduling
 When scheduling takes place only under circumstances 2
and 3
 Preemptive scheduling can result in race conditions when
data are shared among several processes.
 Consider the case of two processes that share data.
While one process is updating the data, it is preempted
so that the second process can run. The second process
then tries to read the data, which are in an inconsistent
state.
 Consider preemption while in kernel mode
 Consider interrupts occurring during crucial OS activities
 Virtually all modern operating systems including Windows,
Mac OS X, Linux, and UNIX use preemptive scheduling
algorithms.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 5.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Dispatcher

 Dispatcher module gives control of the

CPU to the process selected by the CPU
scheduler; this involves:
 switching context
 switching to user mode
 jumping to the proper location in the
user program to restart that program
 Dispatch latency – time it takes for the
dispatcher to stop one process and start
another running

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 5.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Scheduling Criteria

 CPU utilization – keep the CPU as busy as possible

 Throughput – number of processes that complete their
execution per time unit (e.g., 5 per second)
 Turnaround time – amount of time to execute a
particular process
 Waiting time – total amount of time a process has been
waiting in the ready queue
 Response time – amount of time it takes from when a
request was submitted until the first response is
produced, not output (for time-sharing environment)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 5.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Optimization Criteria for Scheduling

 Max CPU utilization

 Max throughput
 Min turnaround time
 Min waiting time
 Min response time

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 5.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Scheduling Algorithm

 First –come, First-serve (FCFS)

 Shortest-Job-First Scheduling (SJF)
 Round-Robin Scheduling (RR)
 Priority Scheduling
 Multilevel Queue Scheduling

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 5.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 First- Come, First-Served (FCFS) Scheduling

 Consider the following three processes and their burst time

Process Burst Time
P1 24
P2 3
P3 3
 Suppose that the processes arrive in the order: P1 , P2 , P3
 We use Gantt Chart to illustrate a particular schedule

P1 P2 P3
0 24 27 30

 Waiting time for P1 = 0; P2 = 24; P3 = 27

 Average waiting time: (0 + 24 + 27)/3 = 17

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 5.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 FCFS Scheduling (Cont.)

 Suppose that the processes arrive in the order:

P2 , P3 , P1
 The Gantt chart for the schedule is:

P2 P3 P1
0 3 6 30

 Waiting time for P1 = 6; P2 = 0; P3 = 3

 Average waiting time: (6 + 0 + 3)/3 = 3
 Much better than previous case
 Convoy effect - short process behind long process
 Consider one CPU-bound and many I/O-bound processes

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 5.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Shortest-Job-First (SJF)

 Associate with each process the length of its next CPU burst
 Use these lengths to schedule the process with the
shortest time
 SJF is optimal – gives minimum average waiting time for a
given set of processes
 How do we know what is the length of the next CPU
request
 Could ask the user
 what if the user lies?

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 5.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Example of SJF

 Consider the following four processes and their burst time

ProcessArrival Time Burst Time

P1 0.0 6
P2 2.0 8
P3 4.0 7
P4 5.0 3
 SJF scheduling chart

P4 P1 P3 P2
0 3 9 16 24

 Average waiting time = (3 + 16 + 9 + 0) / 4 = 7

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 5.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Determining Length of Next CPU Burst

 Can only estimate (predict) the length – in most cases

should be similar to the previous CPU burst
 Pick the process with shortest predicted next CPU burst
 Can be done by using the length of previous CPU bursts,
using exponential averaging

1. t n  actual length of n th CPU burst

2.  n 1  predicted value for the next CPU burst
3.  , 0    1
4. Define :  n 1   t n  1    n .

 Commonly, α set to ½

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 5.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Examples of Exponential Averaging

  =0
 n+1 = n
 Recent history does not count
  =1
n+1 =  tn

 Only the actual last CPU burst counts
 If we expand the formula, we get:
n+1 =  tn+(1 - ) tn -1 + …
+(1 -  )j  tn -j + …
+(1 -  )n +1 0

 Since both  and (1 - ) are less than or equal to 1, each

successive term has less weight than its predecessor

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 5.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Prediction of the Length of the Next CPU Burst

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 Shortest-remaining-time-first
 Preemptive version of SJF is called shortest-remaining-time-first
 Example illustrating the concepts of varying arrival times and
preemption.
ProcessAarri Arrival TimeT Burst Time
P1 0 8
P2 1 4
P3 2 9
P4 3 5
 Preemptive SJF Gantt Chart

P1 P2 P4 P1 P3
0 1 5 10 17 26

 Average waiting time = [(10-1)+(1-1)+(17-2)+5-3)]/4 = 26/4 = 6.5

msec

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 5.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Round Robin (RR)

 Each process gets a small unit of CPU time (time quantum q).
After this time has elapsed, the process is preempted and
added to the end of the ready queue.
 If there are N processes in the ready queue and the time
quantum is q, then each process gets 1/N of the CPU time in
chunks of at most q time units at once. No process waits more
than (N-1)q time units.
 Timer interrupts every quantum to schedule next process
 Performance
 q large  FIFO
 q small  q must be large with respect to context switch,
otherwise overhead is too high

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 5.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Example of RR with Time Quantum = 4

 Consider the following three processes and their burst time

Process Burst Time

P1 24
P2 3
P3 3
 The Gantt chart is:

P1 P2 P3 P1 P1 P1 P1 P1
0 4 7 10 14 18 22 26 30

 The average waiting time under the RR policy is often longer

 Typically, higher average turnaround than SJF, but better
response
 q should be large compared to context switch time
 q is usually 10ms to 100ms, context switch < 10 usec

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 5.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Time Quantum and Context Switch Time

 The performance of the RR algorithm depends on the size of

the time quantum. If the time quantum is extremely small
(say, 1 millisecond), RR can result in a large number of
context switches.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 5.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Turnaround Time Varies With The Time Quantum

 The average turnaround time of a set of processes does not

necessarily improve as the time-quantum size increases. In
general, the average turnaround time can be improved if most
processes finish their next CPU burst in a single time quantum.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 5.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Priority Scheduling

 A priority number (integer) is associated with each process

 The CPU is allocated to the process with the highest priority

(smallest integer  highest priority)
 Preemptive
 Nonpreemptive

 SJF is priority scheduling where priority is the inverse of predicted

next CPU burst time

 Problem  Starvation – low priority processes may never execute

 Solution  Aging – as time progresses increase the priority of the

process

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 5.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Example of Priority Scheduling
 Consider the following five processes and their burst time

ProcessA arri Burst TimeT Priority

P1 10 3
P2 1 1
P3 2 4
P4 1 5
P5 5 2

 Priority scheduling Gantt Chart

P1 P2 P1 P3 P4
0 1 6 16 18 19

 Average waiting time = 8.2 msec

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 5.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Combining Priority Scheduling and RR

 System executes the highest priority process; processes with the

same priority will be run using round-robin.

 Consider the following five processes and their burst time

ProcessA arri Burst TimeT Priority
P1 4 3
P2 5 2
P3 8 2
P4 7 1
P5 3 3
 Priority scheduling Gantt Chart

 Average waiting time = 8.2 msec

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 5.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Multilevel Queue
 Ready queue is partitioned into separate queues, eg:
 foreground (interactive)
 background (batch)
 Process permanently in a given queue
 Each queue has its own scheduling algorithm:
 foreground – RR
 background – FCFS
 Scheduling must be done between the queues:
 Fixed priority scheduling; (i.e., serve all from foreground then
from background). Possibility of starvation.
 Time slice – each queue gets a certain amount of CPU time
which it can schedule amongst its processes; i.e., 80% to
foreground in RR
 20% to background in FCFS

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 Separate Queue For Each Priority

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 Multilevel Queue Scheduling

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 Multilevel Feedback Queue

 A process can move between the various queues; aging can be

implemented this way
 Multilevel-feedback-queue scheduler defined by the following
parameters:
 number of queues
 scheduling algorithms for each queue
 method used to determine when to upgrade a process
 method used to determine when to demote a process
 method used to determine which queue a process will enter
when that process needs service

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 5.31 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Example of Multilevel Feedback Queue

 Three queues:
 Q0 – RR with time quantum 8
milliseconds
 Q1 – RR time quantum 16 milliseconds
 Q2 – FCFS

 Scheduling
 A new job enters queue Q0 which is
served FCFS
 When it gains CPU, job receives 8
milliseconds
 If it does not finish in 8
milliseconds, job is moved to
queue Q1
 At Q1 job is again served FCFS and
receives 16 additional milliseconds
 If it still does not complete, it is
preempted and moved to queue Q2

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 5.32 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 End of Chapter 5a

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013