Process Scheduling
Process scheduling is the operating system mechanism that decides which of the many runnable processes or threads gets access to the CPU at any given moment, and for how long.
29 resources across 2 libraries
Glossary Terms(4)
Operating System
An operating system (OS) is the foundational software layer that manages a computer's hardware resources and provides common services to application programs,…
Kernel
The kernel is the core component of an Operating System that has direct control over hardware resources — CPU, memory, and devices — and mediates access to the…
Process Scheduling
Process scheduling is the operating system mechanism that decides which of the many runnable processes or threads gets access to the CPU at any given moment, a…
Virtual Memory
Virtual memory is an operating system technique that gives each process the illusion of a large, contiguous, private address space, while the Kernel transparen…
Interview Questions(25)
What is CPU Scheduling?
CPU scheduling is the OS mechanism that decides which ready process or thread gets to run on the CPU next, aiming to balance throughput, fairness, and responsi…
What is First-Come-First-Served (FCFS) Scheduling?
First-Come-First-Served (FCFS) is a non-preemptive CPU scheduling algorithm that runs processes strictly in the order they arrive in the ready queue, giving ea…
What is Shortest-Job-First (SJF) Scheduling?
Shortest-Job-First (SJF) is a scheduling algorithm that always dispatches the ready process with the smallest total CPU burst time next, which provably minimiz…
What is Shortest-Remaining-Time-First (SRTF) Scheduling?
Shortest-Remaining-Time-First (SRTF) is the preemptive version of Shortest-Job-First: whenever a new process arrives, the scheduler compares its burst time to…
What is Priority Scheduling?
Priority scheduling dispatches the ready process with the highest priority value next, rather than by arrival order or burst time, and can be implemented as ei…
What is Multilevel Queue Scheduling?
Multilevel queue scheduling partitions the ready queue into several separate queues by process type — such as system, interactive, and batch — each with its ow…
What is Multilevel Feedback Queue Scheduling?
Multilevel feedback queue (MLFQ) scheduling uses several ready queues ranked by priority, each with its own time quantum, and moves a process between queues ba…
What is Lottery Scheduling?
Lottery scheduling is a probabilistic CPU scheduling algorithm that gives each process a number of lottery tickets proportional to its desired share of the CPU…
What is the Completely Fair Scheduler (CFS)?
The Completely Fair Scheduler (CFS) is the default Linux process scheduler that tracks each runnable task’s virtual runtime and always picks the task with the…
Round Robin vs Priority Scheduling: What is the Difference?
Round Robin gives every ready process an equal, fixed-size time slice in strict rotation regardless of importance, prioritizing fairness and responsiveness, wh…
Deadlock vs Starvation: What Is the Difference?
Deadlock is a permanent standstill where a set of processes are each waiting on a resource held by another in the same set, so none of them can ever proceed wi…
What is Priority Inversion?
Priority inversion is a scheduling hazard where a high-priority task is indirectly blocked by a low-priority task holding a lock it needs, while an unrelated m…
What is a Process Control Block (PCB)?
A Process Control Block (PCB) is the kernel data structure that stores everything the OS needs to know about a process — its state, register values, memory map…
CPU-Bound vs I/O-Bound Processes: What Is the Difference?
A CPU-bound process spends most of its time performing computation and rarely blocks, while an I/O-bound process spends most of its time waiting on disk, netwo…
What is Turnaround Time in CPU Scheduling?
Turnaround time is the total time a process spends in the system, measured as completion time minus arrival time, and it includes waiting in the ready queue, e…
Waiting Time vs Response Time in Scheduling
Waiting time is the total time a process spends sitting in the ready queue without running, while response time is the time from when a process arrives until i…
What is the Convoy Effect in CPU Scheduling?
The convoy effect is a performance problem in First-Come-First-Served scheduling where a single long-running process at the front of the ready queue forces eve…
What is Starvation in CPU Scheduling?
Starvation is a scheduling failure where a process is repeatedly passed over in favor of other processes and, as a result, waits indefinitely and may never get…
Cooperative vs Preemptive Multitasking
Cooperative multitasking relies on each running task voluntarily yielding the CPU back to the scheduler, while preemptive multitasking lets the OS forcibly int…
What is Aging in CPU Scheduling?
Aging is a scheduling technique where the OS gradually increases the priority of a task the longer it waits in the ready queue, which guarantees that even a lo…
What is Dispatcher Latency?
Dispatcher latency is the time the OS dispatcher takes to stop one process and start another once the scheduler has decided which task should run next — it cov…
What Are the Process Scheduling Queues in an OS?
An operating system tracks processes through several distinct scheduling queues — the job queue, the ready queue, and one or more device (I/O) queues — and a p…
Long-Term vs Short-Term Scheduler: What Is the Difference?
The long-term scheduler controls how many processes are admitted from the job queue into memory (the degree of multiprogramming) and runs infrequently, while t…
What Is the Medium-Term Scheduler and How Does Swapping Work?
The medium-term scheduler temporarily removes a process from memory (swaps it out to disk) to reduce the degree of multiprogramming, then later swaps it back i…
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