Chapter 2

Scheduling
 Outline

• CPU Scheduling
• Importance of scheduling in diff. environment
• CPU bound process, I/O bound process
• Preemptive, non-preemptive scheduling
• Batch system scheduling algorithms
• FCFS, Shortest Job First, Shortest Remaining First
• Interactive system scheduling
• RR, Priority scheduling, Lottery Scheduling
• Realtime system scheduling
• Thread Scheduling
• User-level thread
• Kernel-level thread
 Process States

Figure 2-2. A process can be in running, blocked, or ready state.

Transitions between these states are as shown.
Tanenbaum, Modern Operating Systems 3 e, (c) 2008 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-6006639
 Modeling Multiprogramming

Figure 2-6. CPU utilization as a function of the number of

processes in memory.
Tanenbaum, Modern Operating Systems 3 e, (c) 2008 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-6006639
 Process Control Table

Figure 2-4. Some of the fields of a typical process table entry.

Tanenbaum, Modern Operating Systems 3 e, (c) 2008 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-6006639
 Process Scheduling Queues
• Job queue – set of all processes in the system
• Ready queue – set of all processes residing in main
memory, ready and waiting to execute
• Device queues – set of processes waiting for an I/O
device
• Processes migrate among the various queues
Ready Queue And Various I/O Device Queues

• Ready queue –
processes residing in
main memory, ready
and waiting to
execute
• Device queues –
processes waiting for
an I/O device
• Processes migrate
among the various
queues
Representation of Process Scheduling
 Schedulers
• When to schedule?
• when a process is created, or exits
• when a process blocks on I/O, semaphore, mutex…
• interrupts: hardware or software
• timer interrupt: nonpreemptive vs preemptive scheduling
• Long-term scheduler (or job scheduler) – selects which
processes should be brought into the ready queue
• Short-term scheduler (or CPU scheduler) – selects which
process should be executed next and allocates CPU
 Schedulers
• Short-term scheduler is invoked very frequently
(milliseconds) ⇒ (must be fast)
• Long-term scheduler is invoked very infrequently
(seconds, minutes) ⇒ (may be slow)
• The long-term scheduler controls the degree of
multiprogramming
• Processes can be described as either:
– I/O-bound process – spends more time doing I/O than
computations, many short CPU bursts
– CPU-bound process – spends more time doing
computations; few very long CPU bursts
 Process Behavior

Bursts of CPU usage alternate with periods of waiting for I/O. (a) A
CPU-bound process. (b) An I/O-bound process.
Tanenbaum, Modern Operating Systems 3 e, (c) 2008 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-6006639
 Categories of Scheduling Algorithms
• Batch system: business application, no
end users
• non-preemptive, preemptive
• Interactive system: with interactive users,
or server (with multiple remote interactive
users)
• preemption
• Real time system:

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 Scheduling Algorithm Goals

Tanenbaum, Modern Operating Systems 3 e, (c) 2008 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-6006639
 Scheduling in Batch Systems

• First-come first-served
• Shortest job first
• Shortest remaining Time next

Tanenbaum, Modern Operating Systems 3 e, (c) 2008 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-6006639
 First Come First Served

• First-come first-served
• processes assigned CPU in order of request
• when running process blocks, schedule next one in
queue
• when blocking process becomes ready, enter end of
queue
• Pros: simple, easy to implement, fair (in some sense)
• Cons:
• short jobs arrive after a very long job
• one compute-bound process (1 sec at a time), many IO-
bound processes (perform 1000 disk reads) => take a
long time to finish I/O bound process

Tanenbaum, Modern Operating Systems 3 e, (c) 2008 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-6006639
 Shortest Job First

• Assumption: run time for processes are known

in advance
• Scheduler: among equally important jobs in
ready queue, pick the one with the shortest
run time.
• Proof: Shortest Job First yields smallest average
turnaround time, if all jobs are available
simultaneously.

Tanenbaum, Modern Operating Systems 3 e, (c) 2008 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-6006639
 Shortest Job First

Figure 2-40. An example of shortest job first scheduling.

(a) Running four jobs in the original order. (b) Running them in
shortest job first order.

Tanenbaum, Modern Operating Systems 3 e, (c) 2008 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-6006639
 Shortest Remaining Time next

• Jobs/Processes can arrive at different time

• Preemptive version of Shortest Job First
• When new job arrives, if its run time is smaller than
current process’s remaining time, schedule the new job
• Some kind of greedy algorithm: keep the ready queue
as short as possible
• Question: Does this scheme minimize average
turnaround time?

Tanenbaum, Modern Operating Systems 3 e, (c) 2008 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-6006639
Scheduling in Interactive Systems

• Round-robin scheduling
• Priority scheduling
• Multiple queues
• Shortest process next
• Guaranteed scheduling
• Lottery scheduling
• Fair-share scheduling

Tanenbaum, Modern Operating Systems 3 e, (c) 2008 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-6006639
 Round-Robin Scheduling

• A process, when scheduled to run, is

assigned the CPU for a time interval,
quantum
• If process blocks or finishes before quantum
expires, CPU switches to run other process
• If still running at end of quantum, preempt and
schedule other process to run
• Length of quantum
• too short => too much context switch
overhead
• too long => system not responsive/interactive
• typical setting: 20-50 msec
Tanenbaum, Modern Operating Systems 3 e, (c) 2008 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-6006639
 Round-Robin Scheduling

Figure 2-41. Round-robin scheduling.

(a) The list of runnable processes. (b) The list of runnable
processes after B uses up its quantum.
Tanenbaum, Modern Operating Systems 3 e, (c) 2008 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-6006639
 Priority Scheduling

• Idea: assign each process a priority, ready

processes with highest priority is scheduled
to run
• Setting priority
• based upon the process’s user ID: position,
payment
• higher priority for interactive process, lower
priority for background process => to be
responsive
• dynamically assigned
• e.g., give higher priority to I/O bound process

Tanenbaum, Modern Operating Systems 3 e, (c) 2008 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-6006639
 Priority Scheduling: data structure

Run for one quantum

Run for 2 quanta

Run for 4 quanta

Run for 8 quanta

Example (CTSS)
• CPU bound process will sink to long priority queue
• If used up quantum, move down one class
• larger quantum => cut context switch overhead
• I/O bound process will stay at high priority queue
Tanenbaum, Modern Operating Systems 3 e, (c) 2008 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-6006639
Interactive Systems: shortest process next
• Interactive process:
1. wait for command
2. execute command
3. go back to 1
• To minimize response time (step 2 above), schedule
process with shortest running time
• Estimate running time of a process’s step 2 using
history (weighted average, aging)
• Te’ = aTe + (1-a) Ti
• Te: current estimation
• Te’: new estimation
• Ti: current measured running time
Tanenbaum, Modern Operating Systems 3 e, (c) 2008 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-6006639
 Interactive Systems:
Lottery Scheduling
• A randomized scheme
• each process given lottery tickets for CPU resource
• Scheduler: choose a lottery ticket at random, the process
holds the ticket is the scheduled to run
• The more tickets a process holds, the higher
probability of scheduled to run
• Pros:
• proportional allocation of CPU
• allow transferring of tickets among cooperating
processes,

Tanenbaum, Modern Operating Systems 3 e, (c) 2008 Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-6006639
 Scheduling in Real-time Systems

• Realtime system: must react to external

events within a fixed amount of time
• Periodic events vs aperiodic events
• e.g., in voIP system, incoming audio
packets are periodic events
• in intrusion detection system, detected
abnormal signal is an aperiodic event
• Hard real time
• absolute deadline
• Soft real time
• soft deadline: ok to miss occasionally,
Tanenbaum,e.g., multimedia
Modern Operating Systems 3 e, (c) 2008system
Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved. 0-13-6006639
 Scheduling in Real-Time Systems

» Time plays an essential role

» Categories
– Hard real time
– Soft real time
– Periodic or aperiodic
» Schedulable satisfies
 Thread Scheduling

» Figure 2-44. (a) Possible scheduling of user-level threads with a 50-msec process
quantum and threads that run 5 msec per CPU burst.
 Thread Scheduling

» Figure 2-44. (b) Possible scheduling of kernel-level threads with the same characteristics
as (a).
 Outline
• CPU Scheduling
• Importance of scheduling in diff. environment
• CPU bound process, I/O bound process
• Preemptive, non-preemptive scheduling
• Batch system scheduling algorithms
• FCFS, Shortest Job First, Shortest Remaining First
• Interactive system scheduling
• RR, Priority scheduling, Lottery Scheduling
• Realtime system scheduling
• Thread Scheduling
• User-level thread
• Kernel-level thread