Chapter 35: Process Priorities and Scheduling

This chapter discusses various system calls and process attributes that determine when and which processes obtain access to the CPU(s). We begin by describing the nice value, a process characteristic that influences the amount of CPU time that a process is allocated by the kernel scheduler. We follow this with a description of the POSIX realtime scheduling API. This API allows us to define the policy and priority used for scheduling processes, giving us much tighter control over how processes are allocated to the CPU. We conclude with a discussion of the system calls for setting a process's CPU affinity mask, which determines the set of CPUs on which a process running on a multiprocessor system will run.

35 Process Priorities and Scheduling
35.1 Process Priorities (Nice Values)
35.2 Overview of Realtime Process Scheduling
35.2.1 The SCHED_RR Policy
35.2.2 The SCHED_FIFO Policy
35.2.3 The SCHED_BATCH and SCHED_IDLE Policies
35.3 Realtime Process Scheduling API
35.3.1 Realtime Priority Ranges
35.3.2 Modifying and Retrieving Policies and Priorities
35.3.3 Relinquishing the CPU
35.3.4 The SCHED_RR Time Slice
35.4 CPU Affinity
35.5 Summary
35.6 Exercises