HP-UX 11i Internals

Process/Thread Scheduling

Now that we have seen the fundamental structures used to define a process's logical space and assign system resources, we must consider the task of scheduling threads for execution. This is one of the kernel's primary responsibilities and requires a considerable number of system resources. Traditionally, UNIX is designed to be a load-leveling operating system; that is, the kernel attempts to distribute access to system resources in an equitable fashion to all active threads. While this is a noble cause, at times you might like certain threads to receive a larger (or possibly smaller) share of the kernel's attention. Many operating systems accomplish this by assigning a priority to a job. UNIX has priorities but they ...