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Lesson 17

The document discusses the goals and types of task scheduling in modern operating systems, particularly focusing on Linux. It outlines long-term, medium-term, and short-term scheduling decisions, as well as user-oriented and system-oriented goals such as rapid response time and optimum throughput. Additionally, it explains fairness algorithms, task types, responsiveness, and dynamic priorities in scheduling.

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2 views

Lesson 17

The document discusses the goals and types of task scheduling in modern operating systems, particularly focusing on Linux. It outlines long-term, medium-term, and short-term scheduling decisions, as well as user-oriented and system-oriented goals such as rapid response time and optimum throughput. Additionally, it explains fairness algorithms, task types, responsiveness, and dynamic priorities in scheduling.

Uploaded by

acsfrds
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Task scheduling

What are the goals of a modern


operating system scheduler, and
how does Linux achieve them?
Types of scheduling
• Stallings identifies three distinct kinds of
process-scheduling decisions:
– Long-term: which tasks will the system admit?
When? And in what order?
– Medium-term: which tasks will be temporarily
swapped out to disk? And when will they be
swapped back in to main memory?
– Short-term: which of the ready-to-run tasks
will next gain control of the processor?
When are decisions made?
• Linux makes its short-term scheduling decisions:
– When a timer interrupt occurs
– When an I/O request completes
– When a system-call is invoked
– When a signal is sent
• Linux makes its longer-term scheduling
decisions:
– When a task exits
– When CPU’s idle-time exceeds a given threshold
Goals
• Specific scheduling policies are chosen to
support desired system behaviors
• There are multiple goals -- and sometimes
they may even appear to be contradictory
• So scheduling policies are a “compromise”
User-oriented goals
• Rapid response-time
• Short turnaround-times
• Assured deadlines
• Predictable performance
System-oriented goals
• Optimum throughput
• Maximum CPU utilization
• Balanced resource allocation
• Enforce priorities
• Assure Fairness
Fairness algorithms
• One fairness principle is known as FCFS
(First-Come, First-Served), though it may
not provide optimal throughput
• Another way to implement “fairness” is
“round-robin” scheduling (“timeslicing”) in
which every task gets allocated an equal-
size “slice” of the CPUs available time,
and all tasks take their turn at executing
Task types
• Some tasks are “CPU bound”
– They regularly consume the entire amount of
processor time that they are allotted
• Some tasks are “I/O bound”
– They seldom use up their entire timeslice, but
instead sleep while awaiting an I/O request
How does kernel distinguish?
• If the scheduler repeatedly gets invoked
because a task has used up its timeslice,
the kernel treats that task as “CPU bound”
• If the scheduler repeatedly gets invoked
because a task is going to sleep (i.e., it’s
awaiting completion of an I/O request),
then that task is treated as “I/O bound”
Responsiveness
• To achieve improved responsiveness in
interactive applications, an OS kernel can
assign a higher priority to I/O bound tasks
• Tasks that have higher priority will always
get scheduled before any tasks that have
lower priority get scheduled
• However this could result in “starvation”
Dynamic priorities
• Linux combines priority-based scheduling
with round-robin scheduling
• Linux allows priorities to be dynamically
recomputed
• Separate queues are used for tasks with
differing priorities, while tasks that have
equal priority are scheduled round-robin
• Tasks can migrate between priorities
In-class exercises
• Exercise #1: write an application program
which exhibits “CPU bound” behavior
• Exercise #2: write an application program
which exhibits “I/O bound” behavior
• Exercise #3: write a program which would
exhibit alternating behavior (becoming an
I/O bound task for awhile, then becoming
a CPU bound task for awhile)

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