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Process CPU Priority And Scheduling
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   When multiple processes simultaneously require CPU time, the system's
scheduling policy and process CPU priorities determine which processes
get it.  This section describes how that determination is made and GNU
C library functions to control it.

   It is common to refer to CPU scheduling simply as scheduling and a
process' CPU priority simply as the process' priority, with the CPU
resource being implied.  Bear in mind, though, that CPU time is not the
only resource a process uses or that processes contend for.  In some
cases, it is not even particularly important.  Giving a process a high
"priority" may have very little effect on how fast a process runs with
respect to other processes.  The priorities discussed in this section
apply only to CPU time.

   CPU scheduling is a complex issue and different systems do it in
wildly different ways.  New ideas continually develop and find their
way into the intricacies of the various systems' scheduling algorithms.
This section discusses the general concepts, some specifics of systems
that commonly use the GNU C library, and some standards.

   For simplicity, we talk about CPU contention as if there is only one
CPU in the system.  But all the same principles apply when a processor
has multiple CPUs, and knowing that the number of processes that can
run at any one time is equal to the number of CPUs, you can easily
extrapolate the information.

   The functions described in this section are all defined by the
POSIX.1 and POSIX.1b standards (the `sched...' functions are POSIX.1b).
However, POSIX does not define any semantics for the values that these
functions get and set.  In this chapter, the semantics are based on the
Linux kernel's implementation of the POSIX standard.  As you will see,
the Linux implementation is quite the inverse of what the authors of the
POSIX syntax had in mind.

Absolute Priority

The first tier of priority. Posix

Realtime Scheduling

Scheduling among the process nobility

Basic Scheduling Functions

Get/set scheduling policy, priority

Traditional Scheduling

Scheduling among the vulgar masses