Chapter 6: CPU Scheduling

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Chapter 6: CPU Scheduling
 Basic Concepts
 Scheduling Criteria
 Scheduling Algorithms
 Thread Scheduling
 Multiple-Processor Scheduling
 Real-Time CPU Scheduling
 Operating Systems Examples
 Algorithm Evaluation

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Objectives
 To introduce CPU scheduling, which is the basis for multiprogrammed operating systems

 To describe various CPU-scheduling algorithms

 To discuss evaluation criteria for selecting a CPU-scheduling algorithm for a particular system

 To examine the scheduling algorithms of several operating systems

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Basic Concepts

 Maximum CPU utilization obtained with

multiprogramming

 CPU–I/O Burst Cycle – Process execution

consists of a cycle of CPU execution and
I/O wait

 CPU burst followed by I/O burst

 CPU burst distribution is of main concern

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Histogram of CPU-burst Times

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 CPU Scheduler
 Short-term scheduler selects from among the processes in ready
queue, and allocates the CPU to one of them
 Queue may be ordered in various ways

 CPU scheduling decisions may take place when a process:

1. Switches from running to waiting state
2. Switches from running to ready state
3. Switches from waiting to ready
4. Terminates

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 CPU Scheduler
 Scheduling under 1 and 4 is nonpreemptive
 All other scheduling is preemptive
 Consider access to shared data
 Consider preemption while in kernel mode
 Consider interrupts occurring during crucial OS activities

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 – 9th Edition 6.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Scheduling Criteria
1. CPU utilization – keep the CPU as busy as possible

2. Throughput – # of processes that complete their execution per time unit

3. Turnaround time – amount of time to execute a particular process

4. Waiting time – amount of time a process has been waiting in the ready
queue

5. 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 – 9th Edition 6.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Scheduling Algorithm Optimization Criteria

 Max CPU utilization

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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 – 9th Edition 6.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 FCFS Scheduling (Cont.)
Suppose that the processes arrive in the order:
P2 , P3 , P1
 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
 Consider one CPU-bound and many I/O-bound processes

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 FCFS Scheduling (Cont.)
 There is a convoy effect as all the other processes wait for the one big
process to get off the CPU. This effect results in lower CPU and device
utilization than might be possible if the shorter processes were allowed to
go first.

 Note also that the FCFS scheduling algorithm is nonpreemptive. Once

the CPU has been allocated to a process, that process keeps the CPU
until it releases the CPU, either by terminating or by requesting I/O.

 The FCFS algorithm is thus particularly troublesome for time-sharing

systems, where it is important that each user get a share of the CPU at
regular intervals

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Shortest-Job-First (SJF) Scheduling
 When the CPU is available, it is assigned to the process that has the
smallest next CPU burst.
 If the next CPU bursts of two processes are the same, FCFS scheduling is used to
break the tie.

 So this algorithm 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
 Could ask the user

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Example of SJF
ProcessArriva l 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 – 9th Edition 6.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Determining Length of Next CPU Burst
 The real difficulty with the SJF algorithm is knowing the length of the next
CPU request

 With short-term scheduling, there is no way to know the length of the next
CPU burst but we may be able to predict its value.

 We expect that the next CPU burst will be similar in length to the previous
ones. By computing an approximation of the length of the next CPU burst,
we can pick the process with the shortest predicted CPU burst.

 Can be done by using the length of previous CPU bursts, using

exponential averaging

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Shortest-remaining-time-first
 Preemptive SJF scheduling is sometimes called shortest-remaining-time-
first scheduling.
 Now we add the concepts of varying arrival times and preemption to the
analysis.
ProcessA arri Arrival TimeT Burst Time
P1 0 8
P2 1 4
P3 2 9
P4 3 5

P1 P2 P4 P1 P3

0 1 5 10 17 26

 Average waiting time = [(10-1)+(1-1)+(17-2)+5-3)]/4 = 26/4 = 6.5 msec

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 priority scheduling where priority is the inverse of predicted next CPU
burst time i.e The larger the CPU burst, the lower the priority, and vice versa.

 There is no general agreement on whether 0 is the highest or lowest priority.

We assume that low numbers represent high priority.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Example of Priority Scheduling
ProcessA arri Burst TimeT Priority
P1 10 3
P2 1 1
P3 2 4
P4 1 5
P5 5 2

 Priority scheduling Gantt Chart

P2 P5 P1 P3 P4

0 1 6 16 18 19

 Average waiting time = 8.2 msec

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Factors Effecting Priority of a Process
 Priorities can be defined either internally or externally.

 Internally: For example

1. Time limits
2. Memory requirements
3. The number of open files etc

 External priorities: are set by criteria outside the operating system, such as
1. The importance of the process
2. The type and amount of funds being paid for computer use
3. The other, often political, factors.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Major Problems Priority scheduling algorithms

 A major problem with priority scheduling algorithms is indefinite blocking,

or starvation.

 A priority scheduling algorithm can leave some low priority processes

waiting indefinitely. In a heavily loaded computer system, a steady stream of
higher-priority processes can prevent a low-priority process from ever
getting the CPU.

 Rumor has it that when they shut down the IBM 7094 at MIT in 1973, they
found a low-priority process that had been submitted in 1967 and had not
yet been run.

 Needs a solution ?

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Factors Effecting Priority of a Process
 The solution of the indefinite blockage of low-priority processes is aging.

 Aging involves gradually increasing the priority of processes that wait in

the system for a long time.

 For example, if priorities range from 127 (low) to 0 (high), we could

increase the priority of a waiting process by 1 every 15 minutes.

 Eventually, even a process with an initial priority of 127 would have the
highest priority in the system and would be executed.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Round Robin (RR)
 The round-robin (RR) scheduling algorithm is designed especially for
timesharing systems. It is similar to FCFS scheduling, but preemption is
added to enable the system to switch between processes.

 Each process gets a small unit of CPU time (time quantum q), usually 10-
100 milliseconds. After this time has elapsed, the process is preempted and
added to the end of the ready queue.

 To implement RR scheduling, we again treat the ready queue as a FIFO

queue of processes. New processes are added to the tail of the ready
queue. The CPU scheduler picks the first process from the ready queue,
sets a timer to interrupt after 1 time quantum, and dispatches the process.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Round Robin (RR)
 One of two things will then happen.

 The process may have a CPU burst of less than 1 time quantum. In this case,
the process itself will release the CPU voluntarily.

 If the CPU burst of the currently running process is longer than 1 time quantum,
the timer will go off and will cause an interrupt to the operating system. A
context switch will be executed, and the process will be put at the tail of the
ready queue.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Example of RR with Time Quantum = 4
 Consider the following set of processes that arrive at time 0, with the length
of the CPU burst given in milliseconds:
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

 q should be large compared to context switch time
 q usually 10ms to 100ms, context switch < 10 usec
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Facts about Round Robin (RR)
 In the RR scheduling algorithm, no process is allocated the CPU for more
than 1 time quantum in a row (unless it is the only runnable process).

 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.

 Each process must wait no longer than (n − 1) × q time units until its next
time quantum.

 The performance of the RR algorithm depends heavily on the size of the

time quantum. At one extreme, if the time quantum is extremely large, the
RR policy is the same as the FCFS policy. In contrast, if the time quantum is
extremely small (say, 1 millisecond), the RR approach can result in a large
number of context switches.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Time Quantum and Context Switch Time

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Turnaround Time Varies With
The Time Quantum
Process Burst Time

P1 10 8 6 4 2 0
P2 10 8 6 4 2 0
P3 10 8 6 4 2 0

P1 P2 P3 P1 P2 P3 P1 P2 P3 P1 P2 P3 P1 P2 P3

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30

Waiting time P1 = 16 msec Turn around time P1 = 16 + 10 = 26 msec

Waiting time P2 = 18 msec Turn around time P2 = 18 + 10 = 28 msec
Waiting time P3 = 20 msec Turn around time P3 = 20 + 10 = 30 msec

Average waiting time = 18 msec Average turnaround time = 28 msec

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.28 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Turnaround Time Varies With
The Time Quantum
Process Burst Time

P1 10
P2 10
P3 10

P1 P2 P3

0 10 20 30

Waiting time P1 = 0 msec Turn around time P1 = 00 + 10 = 10 msec

Waiting time P2 = 10 msec Turn around time P2 = 10 + 10 = 20 msec
Waiting time P3 = 20 msec Turn around time P3 = 20 + 10 = 30 msec

Average waiting time = 10 msec Average turnaround time = 20 msec

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.29 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Turnaround Time Varies With
The Time Quantum

 If context-switch time is added in, the average turnaround time increases

even more for a smaller time quantum, since more context switches are
required.

 Although the time quantum should be large compared with the

contextswitch time, it should not be too large. As we pointed out earlier, if
the time quantum is too large, RR scheduling degenerates to an FCFS
policy

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.30 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Multilevel Queue
 Ready queue is partitioned into separate queues, eg:
 foreground (interactive)
 background (batch)

 Process permanently reside in a given queue, generally based on some

property of the process, such as memory size, process priority, or
process type.

 Each queue has its own scheduling algorithm:

 foreground – RR
 background – FCFS

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.31 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Multilevel Queue Scheduling
Multilevel queue scheduling algorithm with five queues, listed below
in order of priority:

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.32 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Multilevel Queue
 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 – 9th Edition 6.33 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Multilevel Feedback Queue
 A process can move between the various queues; aging can be
implemented this way

 The idea is to separate processes according to the characteristics of

their CPU bursts. If a process uses too much CPU time, it will be moved
to a lower-priority queue

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.34 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 – 9th Edition 6.35 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Thread Scheduling
 On operating systems that support threads, kernel-level threads are
being scheduled by the operating system , not processes.

 User-level threads are managed by a thread library, and the kernel is

unaware of them

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.36 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Homework
 Write answers to exercise question numbers from 6.1
to 6.27.

 If your roll number last digit is odd, then write answers

to odd questions and if its even then write answer to
even number question.

 Only handwritten neat and clean homework will be

accepted.

 Page size and page quality through out the course

should remain the same.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.37 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 End of Chapter 6

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013