Chapter 6: CPU Scheduling

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 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 6.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Histogram of CPU-burst Times

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.3 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
 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 6.4 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 6.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Scheduling Criteria

 CPU utilization – keep the CPU as busy as possible

 Throughput – # 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 – 9th Edition 6.6 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 6.7 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 6.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 FCFS Scheduling (Cont.)
Suppose that the processes arrive in the order:
P2 , P 3 , 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 6.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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
 Could ask the user

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.10 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 6.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Determining Length of Next CPU Burst

 Can only estimate the length – should be similar to the previous one
 Then pick process with shortest predicted next CPU burst

 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 .
 Commonly, α set to ½
 Preemptive version called shortest-remaining-time-first

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Prediction of the Length of the Next CPU Burst

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Examples of Exponential Averaging
  =0
 n+1 = n
 Recent history does not count
  =1
 n+1 =  tn
 Only the actual last CPU burst counts
 If we expand the formula, we get:
n+1 =  tn+(1 - ) tn -1 + …
+(1 -  )j  tn -j + …
+(1 -  )n +1 0

 Since both  and (1 - ) are less than or equal to 1, each

successive term has less weight than its predecessor

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Example of Shortest-remaining-time-first

 Now we add the concepts of varying arrival times and preemption to

the analysis
ProcessAarri Arrival TimeT Burst Time
P1 0 8
P2 1 4
P3 2 9
P4 3 5
 Preemptive SJF Gantt Chart

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 6.15 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

 Problem  Starvation – low priority processes may never execute

 Solution  Aging – as time progresses increase the priority of the

process

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.16 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

 Average waiting time = 8.2 msec

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Round Robin (RR)

 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.
 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.
 Timer interrupts every quantum to schedule next process
 Performance
 q large  FIFO
 q small  q must be large with respect to context switch,
otherwise overhead is too high

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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
 q should be large compared to context switch time
 q usually 10ms to 100ms, context switch < 10 usec

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Time Quantum and Context Switch Time

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Turnaround Time Varies With The Time Quantum

80% of CPU bursts should

be shorter than q

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Multilevel Queue
 Ready queue is partitioned into separate queues, eg:
 foreground (interactive)
 background (batch)
 Process permanently in a given queue
 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 – 9th Edition 6.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Multilevel Queue Scheduling

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 – 9th Edition 6.24 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 6.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Algorithm Evaluation
 How to select CPU-scheduling algorithm for an OS?
 Determine criteria, then evaluate algorithms
 Deterministic modeling
 Type of analytic evaluation
 Takes a particular predetermined workload and defines the
performance of each algorithm for that workload
 Consider 5 processes arriving at time 0:

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Deterministic Evaluation

 For each algorithm, calculate minimum average waiting time

 Simple and fast, but requires exact numbers for input, applies only to
those inputs
 FCS is 28ms:

 Non-preemptive SFJ is 13ms:

 RR is 23ms:

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Queueing Models
 Describes the arrival of processes, and CPU and I/O bursts
probabilistically
 Commonly exponential, and described by mean
 Computes average throughput, utilization, waiting time, etc
 Computer system described as network of servers, each with
queue of waiting processes
 Knowing arrival rates and service rates
 Computes utilization, average queue length, average wait
time, etc

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 6.28 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013