Scheduling – Queues – Schedulers

– Context Switching

Prepared by Aswathy K.R ,Asst. Professor,Dept.of CSE, CE

Munnar
Scheduling – Queues
The objective of multiprogramming is to have some process
running at all times, to maximize CPU utilization.

The objective of time sharing is to switch the CPU among

processes so frequently that users can interact with each
program while it is running.

Process scheduler selects an available process (possibly from

a set of several available processes) for program execution on
the CPU.

For a single-processor system, there will never be more than

one running process. If there are more processes, the rest will
have to wait until the CPU is free and can be rescheduled.
Scheduling Queues
As processes enter the system, they are put into a job queue,
which consists of all processes in the system.
The processes that are residing in main memory and are ready
and waiting to execute are kept on a list called the ready queue.
This queue is generally stored as a linked list.
A ready-queue header contains pointers to the first and final
PCBs in the list.
Each PCB includes a pointer field that points to the next PCB
in the ready queue.
The system also includes other queues. Each device has its
own device queue.
Scheduling Queues
Scheduling Queues

Each rectangular box represents a queue.

 Two types of queues are present: the ready queue and a set of device
queues.
The circles represent the resources that serve the queues, and the arrows
indicate the flow of processes in the system.
Scheduling Queues
A new process is initially put in the ready queue.
It waits there until it is selected for execution, or dispatched.
Once the process is allocated the CPU and is executing, one of
several events could occur:
1. The process could issue an I/O request and then be placed in an
I/O queue.
2. The process could create a new child process and wait for the
child’s termination.
3. The process could be removed forcibly from the CPU, as a result
of an interrupt, and be put back in the ready queue.
In the first two cases, the process eventually switches from the
waiting state to the ready state and is then put back in the ready
queue.
A process continues this cycle until it terminates, at which time it is
removed from all queues and has its PCB and resources deallocated
Schedulers
A process migrates among the various scheduling queues
throughout its lifetime.
The operating system must select, for scheduling purposes,
processes from these queues in some fashion.
 The selection process is carried out by the appropriate scheduler.
In a batch system, more processes are submitted than can be
executed immediately. These processes are spooled to a mass-
storage device (typically a disk), where they are kept for later
execution. The long-term scheduler, or job scheduler, selects
processes from this pool and loads them into memory for
execution.
The short-term scheduler, or CPU scheduler, selects from
among the processes that are ready to execute and allocates the
CPU to one of them.
Schedulers
The primary distinction between these two schedulers lies in
frequency of execution.
The short-term scheduler must select a new process for the
CPU frequently.
The long-term scheduler executes much less frequently;
minutes may separate the creation of one new process and the
next.
Schedulers
 Processes can be described as either I/O bound or CPU bound.
 I/O-bound process : Spends more of its time doing I/O than it
spends doing computations.
 CPU-bound process: Generates I/O requests infrequently,
using more of its time doing computations.
 Long-term scheduler select a good process mix of I/O-bound and
CPU-bound processes.
 If all processes are I/O bound, the ready queue will almost
always be empty, and the short-term scheduler will have little to
do.
 If all processes are CPU bound, the I/O waiting queue will almost
always be empty, devices will go unused, and again the system
will be unbalanced.
 The system with the best performance will thus have a
combination of CPU-bound and I/O-bound processes.
Schedulers
Medium-term scheduler
Medium-term scheduler can remove a process from
memory (and from active contention for the CPU) and later the
process can be reintroduced into memory, and its execution can
be continued where it left off.
This scheme is called swapping.
Swapping is necessary to improve the process mix(CPU bound
I/O bound)
Context Switch
When an interrupt occurs, the system needs to save the current
context of the process running on the CPU so that it can restore
that context when process resumes.
 The context is represented in the PCB of the process.
It includes the value of the CPU registers, the process state and
memory-management information.
 a context switch is the process of storing and restoring
the state (more specifically, the execution context) of
a process so that execution can be resumed from the same
point at a later time. This enables multiple processes to share a
single CPU and is an essential feature of a multitasking
operating system.
Context Switch
When a context switch occurs, the kernel saves the context of
the old process in its PCB and loads the saved context of the
new process scheduled to run.

Context-switch time is pure overhead, because the system does

no useful work while switching.

Switching speed varies from machine to machine, depending

on the memory speed, the number of registers that must be
copied etc.
Context Switch
Context-switch times are highly dependent on hardware
support.
For instance, some processors (such as the Sun Ultra SPARC)
provide multiple sets of registers.
A context switch here simply requires changing the pointer to
the current register set.