Chapter 5:

Process Scheduling

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition, Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Concepts
 Basic Concepts
 Scheduling Criteria
 Scheduling Algorithms
 Thread Scheduling
 Multiple-Processor Scheduling

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 5.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Basic Concepts
 Maximum CPU utilization, obtained with multiprogramming

 Execution (cpu is busy) and waiting time (cpu has no work).

 CPU–I/O Burst Cycle – Process execution consists of a cycle of

CPU execution and I/O wait

 CPU burst distribution

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 5.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Alternating Sequence of CPU And I/O Bursts

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 5.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Histogram of CPU-burst Times

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 5.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 CPU Scheduler
 Selects from among the processes in memory that are ready to execute,
and allocates the CPU to one of them

 CPU scheduling decisions may take place when a process:

1. Switches from running to waiting state (wait for event)
2. Switches from running to ready state (because of interrupt)
3. Switches from waiting to ready state (e.g. I/O is finished)
4. Terminates (finished execution)

 Scheduling under 1 and 4 is NON-PREEMPTIVE

 All other scheduling is PREEMPTIVE

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 5.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Dispatcher

 Dispatcher module gives control of the CPU to the process

selected by the short-term 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 – 8th Edition 5.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Scheduling Criteria
 CPU utilization – keep the CPU as busy as possible

 Throughput – number of processes that complete their execution

per time unit

 Turnaround time – amount of time to execute a particular process

 Waiting time – 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 – 8th Edition 5.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Scheduling Algorithm Optimization Criteria

 Max CPU utilization

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

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 5.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 First-Come, First-Served (FCFS) Scheduling

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 5.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 First-Come, First-Served (FCFS) Scheduling

Process Burst Time

P1 24
P2 3
P3 3
 Suppose that the processes arrive in the order: P1 , P2 , P3
The Gantt Chart for the schedule is:

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 5.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 First-Come, First-Served (FCFS) Scheduling

Process Burst Time

P1 24
P2 3
P3 3
 Suppose that the processes arrive in the order: P1 , P2 , P3
The Gantt Chart for the schedule is:

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 – 8th Edition 5.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 FCFS Scheduling (Cont)
Suppose that the processes arrive in the order
P 2 , P3 , P 1

 The Gantt chart for the schedule is:

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 5.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 FCFS Scheduling (Cont)
Suppose that the processes arrive in the order
P 2 , P3 , P 1
 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

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 5.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Shortest-Job-First (SJF) Scheduling

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 5.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Shortest-Job-First (SJF) Scheduling
 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
 The difficulty is knowing the length of the next CPU request

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 5.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Example of SJF
Process Arrival Time Burst Time
P1 0.0 6
P2 2.0 8
P3 4.0 7
P4 5.0 3

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 5.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Example of SJF
Process Arrival 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 – 8th Edition 5.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Determining Length of Next CPU Burst

 Can only estimate the length

 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 .

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 5.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Priority Scheduling

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 5.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 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 a priority scheduling where priority is the 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 – 8th Edition 5.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Round Robin (RR)

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 5.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Round Robin (RR)

 Each process gets a small unit of CPU time (time quantum),

usually 10-100 milliseconds. 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.

 Performance
 q large  FIFO
 q small  q must be large with respect to context switch,
otherwise overhead is too high

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 5.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Example of RR with Time Quantum = 4

Process Burst Time

P1 24
P2 3
P3 3

 The Gantt chart is:

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 5.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 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 18 22 26 30

 Typically, higher average turnaround than SJF, but better response

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 5.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Time Quantum and Context Switch Time

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 5.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Turnaround Time Varies With The Time
Quantum

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 5.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Multilevel Queue
 Ready queue is partitioned into separate queues:
foreground (interactive)
background (batch)
 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

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 5.28 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Multilevel Queue Scheduling

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 5.29 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 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 – 8th Edition 5.30 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 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 – 8th Edition 5.31 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Multilevel Feedback Queues

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 5.32 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Thread Scheduling

 Distinction between user-level and kernel-level threads

 Many-to-one and many-to-many models
 thread library schedules user-level threads to run on LWP
 Known as process-contention scope (PCS) since scheduling
competition is within the process

 Kernel thread scheduled onto available CPU is system-contention

scope (SCS) – competition among all threads in system

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 5.33 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Multiple-Processor Scheduling

 CPU scheduling more complex when multiple CPUs are available

 Homogeneous processors within a multiprocessor
 Asymmetric multiprocessing – only one processor accesses the
system data structures, relieving the need for data sharing
 Symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) – each processor is self-
scheduling, all processes in common ready queue, or each has its
own private queue of ready processes
 Processor affinity – process has affinity for processor on which it is
currently running
 soft affinity
 hard affinity

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 5.34 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009