CPU Scheduling

• How is the OS to decide which of several tasks to take off a queue?

• Scheduling: deciding which threads are given access to resources
from moment to moment.

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Assumptions about Scheduling

• CPU scheduling big area of research in early ‘70s

• Many implicit assumptions for CPU scheduling:
• One program per user
• One thread per program
• Programs are independent
• These are unrealistic but simplify the problem
• Does “fair” mean fairness among users or programs?
• If I run one compilation job and you run five, do you get five times as much
CPU?
• Often times, yes!
• Goal: dole out CPU time to optimize some desired parameters of the
system.
• What parameters?

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Assumption: CPU Bursts

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Assumption: CPU Bursts

• Execution model: programs alternate between bursts of CPU and I/O

• Program typically uses the CPU for some period of time, then does I/O, then uses CPU
again
• Each scheduling decision is about which job to give to the CPU for use by its next CPU
burst
• With timeslicing, thread may be forced to give up CPU before finishing current CPU
burst.

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What is Important in a Scheduling
Algorithm?
• Minimize Response Time
• Elapsed time to do an operation (job)
• Response time is what the user sees
• Time to echo keystroke in editor
• Time to compile a program
• Real-time Tasks: Must meet deadlines imposed by World
• Maximize Throughput
• Jobs per second
• Throughput related to response time, but not identical
• Minimizing response time will lead to more context switching than if you maximized only
throughput
• Minimize overhead (context switch time) as well as efficient use of resources (CPU,
disk, memory, etc.)
• Fairness
• Share CPU among users in some equitable way
• Not just minimizing average response time

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Scheduling Algorithms: First-Come, First-
Served (FCFS)

• “Run until Done:” FIFO algorithm

• In the beginning, this meant one program runs non-preemtively until
it is finished (including any blocking for I/O operations)
• Now, FCFS means that a process keeps the CPU until one or more
threads block
• Example: Three processes arrive in order P1, P2, P3.
• P1 burst time: 24
• P2 burst time: 3
• P3 burst time: 3
• Draw the Gantt Chart and compute Average Waiting Time and
Average Completion Time.

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Scheduling Algorithms: First-Come, First-
Served (FCFS)
• Example: Three processes arrive in order P1, P2, P3.
• P1 burst time: 24
• P2 burst time: 3 P1 P2 P3
• P3 burst time: 3
0 24 27 30
• Waiting Time
• P1: 0
• P2: 24
• P3: 27
• Completion Time:
• P1: 24
• P2: 27
• P3: 30
• Average Waiting Time: (0+24+27)/3 = 17
• Average Completion Time: (24+27+30)/3 = 27

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Scheduling Algorithms: First-Come, First-
Served (FCFS)
• What if their order had been P2, P3, P1?
• P1 burst time: 24
• P2 burst time: 3
• P3 burst time: 3

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Scheduling Algorithms: First-Come, First-
Served (FCFS)
• What if their order had been P2, P3, P1?
• P1 burst time: 24
• P2 burst time: 3 P2 P3 P1
• P3 burst time: 3
0 3 6 30
• Waiting Time
• P1: 0
• P2: 3
• P3: 6
• Completion Time:
• P1: 3
• P2: 6
• P3: 30
• Average Waiting Time: (0+3+6)/3 = 3 (compared to 17)
• Average Completion Time: (3+6+30)/3 = 13 (compared to 27)

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Scheduling Algorithms: First-Come, First-
Served (FCFS)
• Average Waiting Time: (0+3+6)/3 = 3 (compared to 17)
• Average Completion Time: (3+6+30)/3 = 13 (compared to 27)
• FIFO Pros and Cons:
• Simple (+)
• Short jobs get stuck behind long ones (-)
• If all you’re buying is milk, doesn’t it always seem like you are stuck behind a cart full of
many items
• Performance is highly dependent on the order in which jobs arrive (-)

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Round Robin (RR) Scheduling

• FCFS Scheme: Potentially bad for short jobs!

• Depends on submit order
• If you are first in line at the supermarket with milk, you don’t care who is
behind you; on the other hand…
• Round Robin Scheme
• Each process gets a small unit of CPU time (time quantum)
• Usually 10-100 ms
• After quantum expires, the process is preempted and added to the end of the
ready queue
• Suppose N processes in ready queue and time quantum is Q ms:
• Each process gets 1/N of the CPU time
• In chunks of at most Q ms
• What is the maximum wait time for each process?
• No process waits more than (n-1)q time units

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Round Robin (RR) Scheduling

• Round Robin Scheme

• Each process gets a small unit of CPU time (time quantum)
• Usually 10-100 ms
• After quantum expires, the process is preempted and added to the end of the
ready queue
• Suppose N processes in ready queue and time quantum is Q ms:
• Each process gets 1/N of the CPU time
• In chunks of at most Q ms
• What is the maximum wait time for each process?
• No process waits more than (n-1)q time units

• Performance Depends on Size of Q

• Small Q => interleaved
• Large Q is like FCFS
• Q must be large with respect to context switch time, otherwise overhead is
too high (spending most of your time context switching!)

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Example of RR with Time Quantum = 4
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 1822 2630

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Example of RR with Time Quantum = 4
Process Burst Time
P1 24 P1 P2 P3 P1 P1 P1 P1 P1
P2 3
P3 3 0 4 7 10 14 1822 2630
• Waiting Time:
• P1: (10-4) = 6
• P2: (4-0) = 4
• P3: (7-0) = 7
• Completion Time:
• P1: 30
• P2: 7
• P3: 10
• Average Waiting Time: (6 + 4 + 7)/3= 5.67
• Average Completion Time: (30+7+10)/3=15.67

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Turnaround Time Varies With The Time Quantum

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Example of RR with Time Quantum = 20

• Waiting Time: A process can finish before the time quantum expires, and release the CPU.
• P1: (68-20)+(112-88) = 72
• P2: (20-0) = 20
• P3: (28-0)+(88-48)+(125-108) = 85
• P4: (48-0)+(108-68) = 88
• Completion Time:
• P1: 125
• P2: 28
• P3: 153
• P4: 112
• Average Waiting Time: (72+20+85+88)/4 = 66.25
• Average Completion Time: (125+28+153+112)/4 = 104.5

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RR Summary
• Pros and Cons:
• Better for short jobs (+)
• Fair (+)
• Context-switching time adds up for long jobs (-)
• The previous examples assumed no additional time was needed for context switching – in reality, this would add to wait
and completion time without actually progressing a process towards completion.
• Remember: the OS consumes resources, too!
• If the chosen quantum is
• too large, response time suffers
• infinite, performance is the same as FIFO
• too small, throughput suffers and percentage overhead grows
• Actual choices of timeslice:
• UNIX: initially 1 second:
• Worked when only 1-2 users
• If there were 3 compilations going on, it took 3
seconds to echo each keystroke!
• In practice, need to balance short-job
performance and long-job throughput:
• Typical timeslice 10ms-100ms
• Typical context-switch overhead 0.1ms – 1ms (about 1%)

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Comparing FCFS and RR
• Assuming zero-cost context Job # FCFS CT RR CT
switching time, is RR always 1 100 991
better than FCFS? 2 200 992
• Assume 10 jobs, all start at the … … …
same time, and each require
100 seconds of CPU time 9 900 999

• RR scheduler quantum of 1 10 1000 1000

second
• Completion Times (CT)
• Both FCFS and RR finish at the same time
• But average response time is much worse under RR!
• Bad when all jobs are same length
• Also: cache state must be shared between all jobs with RR but can be
devoted to each job with FIFO
• Total time for RR longer even for zero-cost context switch!

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