Scheduler Finale

The process scheduler is an important part of the kernel because running processes is (for most of us, at least) the point of using the computer in the first place. Juggling the demands of process scheduling are nontrivial, however: A large number of runnable processes, scalability concerns, tradeoffs between latency and throughput, and the demands of various workloads make a one-size-fits-all algorithm hard to find. The Linux kernel's new process scheduler, however, comes very close to appeasing all parties and providing an optimal solution for all cases with perfect scalability and ever-apparent charm.

Remaining issues include fine tuning (or even totally replacing) the interactivity estimator, which is a godsend when it makes correct predictions and a total pain when it guesses wrong. Work on alternatives continues; one day we will likely see a new implementation in the mainline kernel.

Improved behavior on NUMA (non-uniform memory architecture) machines is of growing importance as the prevalence of NUMA machines increases. Support for scheduler domains, a scheduler abstraction used to describe process topology, was merged into the mainline kernel early in the 2.6 series.

This chapter looked at theory behind process scheduling and the specific implementation, algorithms, and interfaces used by the current Linux kernel. The next chapter covers the primary interface that the kernel provides to running processes: system calls.