Operating Systems

CS F372

CPU Scheduling

Biju K Raveendran
 • Average sleep time is also used by the scheduler to
determine whether a given process should be
considered interactive or branch process
• Interactive process
– Dynamic priority <= 3 X static priority / 4 + 28
– Which is equivalent to Bonus – 5 >= static priority / 4 – 28
– static priority / 4 – 28 is called the interactive delta
• varies from -3 (highest priority) to +6 (lowest priority)
– It is far easier for a high priority process to become interactive
than low priority process
• Process with priority 100 is considered interactive if bonus >2
(when its average sleep time exceeds 200ms)
• Process with priority 139 is never considered interactive because
bonus value required is 11 which is not achievable

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 • Conventional processes with higher static priorities get
larger slices of the CPU
– They should not completely lock out the processes
having lower static priority
• To avoid process starvation, when a process finishes its
time quantum, it can be replaced by a lower priority
process whose time quantum has not yet been
exhausted
• To achieve this, in Linux scheduler maintains 2 disjoint
set of runnable processes
– Active Processes
– Expired processes
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 Reality
• Scheduler tries to boost the performance of interactive processes
– An active batch process finishes its time quantum always becomes
expired
– An active interactive process finishes its time quantum usually remains
active
• Scheduler refills its time quantum and leaves it in the set of active
processes
– However, scheduler moves an interactive process that finishes its time
quantum to expired process if
• The eldest expired process has already waited for long time
• An expired process has higher static priority (lower value) than the
interactive process
– The active processes will become empty & expired processes will get a
chance to run

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 Scheduling Real-time Processes
• Every real time process is associated with a real time priority
ranging from 1 (highest) to 99 (lowest)
• Scheduler always favors a higher priority runnable process over a
lower priority one
• Real time processes are always considered active
• User can change the real-time priority of a process by
sched_setparam() and sched_setscheduler() system calls
• If several real time runnable processes have the same highest
priority, the scheduler chooses the process that occurs first in the
corresponding list of the local CPU’s run queue

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 • A real time process is replaced by another only when
one of the following events occur
– Process is preempted by a higher real time priority
process
– Process performs blocking operation (TASK_
INTERRUPTABLE or TASK_UNINTERRUPTABLE)
– Process is stopped (TASK_STOPPED or TASK_TRACED)
– Process is killed (EXIT_ZOMBIE or EXIT_DEAD)
– Process voluntarily relinquishes the CPU by invoking
sched_yield() system call
– The process is Round Robin real time (SCHED_RR)
and it has exhausted its time quantum
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 • The nice() and setpriority() system calls, when
applied to a RR real time process, do not change
the real time priority
– Changes the duration of the base time
quantum
• Duration of the base time quantum in RR does
not depend on real time priority
– Depends on the static priority of the process

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 • The arrays field of the runqueue is an array consisting of
two prio_array_t structures
– Each data structure represents
• A set of runnable processes and includes 140 doubly linked
list heads (one list for each possible process priority),
• A priority bit map and
• A counter of the processes included in the set
– The active field of the runqueue structure points to
one of the two prio_array_t data structure in arrays
• Exchange of active and expired data structures is
achieved by exchanging the contents of the active and
expired fields of the runqueue
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List of Tasks Indexed According to Priorities

139 139
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 • recalc_task_prio()
– Updates the dynamic priority of a process
– Updates the average sleep time of a process
• schedule()
– Selects a process from the runqueue list and assign CPU to it.
– Invoked directly or lazy (deferred) way
• Direct
– The current process is blocked right away because the resource it
needs is not available.
• Lazy invocation
– By setting the TIF_NEED_RESCHED flag of current process to 1
– Check on the value of this flag is made before resuming the
execution of a User Mode Process

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 • Examples of lazy invocation
– When current process has used up its quantum time
(done by scheduler_tick() function)
– When a process is woken up and its priority is higher
than that of the current process (done by
try_to_wake_up() function)
– When a sched_setscheduler() system call is issued
• load_balance()
– Keeps the runqueues of a multiprocessor system
balanced

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 Exercise
Process Nice Execution Sleep Real Time Sched policy
Time(ms) time(ms) Priority
A 8 50 0 - SCHED_OTHER
B -15 800 0 - SCHED_OTHER
C -5 600 - 30 SCHED_RR
D 0 100 - 30 SCHED_FCFS
• A Linux OS supporting O(1) Scheduler has this snapshot at time t. Assume
that the order of arrival of processes to the system is Process A to Process
D. Process A and B are Conventional processes and Process C and D are
Real Time Processes.
• Find Static Priority for all the processes.
• Find Quantum time for all the processes.
• Find Dynamic priority for all Conventional processes.
• Find the resultant schedule and represent it as Gantt chart
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