Performance

Because the scheduler determines when and for how long processes run, it has an overriding importance in the performance and perceived performance of a system.

By default, all user processes are time-sharing processes. A process changes class only via a priocntl function call.

All real-time process priorities have a higher priority than any time-sharing process. As long as any real-time process is runnable, no time-sharing process or system process ever runs. So if a real-time application is not written carefully, it can completely lock out other users and essential kernel housekeeping.

Besides controlling process class and priorities, a real-time application must also control several other factors that influence its performance. The most important factors in performance are CPU power, amount of primary memory, and I/O throughput. These factors interact in complex ways. The sar(1) command has options for reporting on all performance factors.

Process State Transition

Applications that have strict real-time constraints might need to prevent processes from being swapped or paged out to secondary memory. Here's a simplified overview of UNIX process states and the transitions between states:

Figure 4-3 Process State Transition Diagram

An active process is normally in one of the five states in the diagram. The arrows show how it changes states.

• A process is running if it is assigned to a CPU. A process is preempted--that is, removed from the running state--by the scheduler if a process with a higher priority becomes runnable. A process is also preempted if it consumes its entire time slice and a process of equal priority is runnable.

• A process is runnable in memory if it is in primary memory and ready to run, but is not assigned to a CPU.

• A process is sleeping in memory if it is in primary memory but is waiting for a specific event before it can continue execution. For example, a process is sleeping if it is waiting for an I/O operation to complete, for a locked resource to be unlocked, or for a timer to expire. When the event occurs, the process is sent a wake up; if the reason for its sleep is gone, the process becomes runnable.

• A process is runnable and swapped if it is not waiting for a specific event but has had its whole address space written to secondary memory to make room in primary memory for other processes.

• A process is sleeping and swapped if it is both waiting for a specific event and has had its whole address space written to secondary memory to make room in primary memory for other processes.

  If a machine does not have enough primary memory to hold all its active processes, it must page or swap some address space to secondary memory:

• When the system is short of primary memory, it writes individual pages of some processes to secondary memory but still leaves those processes runnable. When a process runs, if it accesses those pages, it must sleep while the pages are read back into primary memory.

• When the system gets into a more serious shortage of primary memory, it writes all the pages of some processes to secondary memory and marks those processes as swapped. Such processes get back into a state where they can be scheduled only by being chosen by the system scheduler daemon process, then read back into memory.

  Both paging and swapping cause delay when a process is ready to run again. For processes that have strict timing requirements, this delay can be unacceptable.

  To avoid swapping delays, real-time processes are never swapped, though parts of them can be paged. A program can prevent paging and swapping by locking its text and data into primary memory. For more information see memcntl(2). How much memory can be locked is limited by how much memory is configured. Also, locking too much can cause intolerable delays to processes that do not have their text and data locked into memory.

  Trade-offs between performance of real-time processes and performance of other processes depend on local needs. On some systems, process locking might be required to guarantee the necessary real-time response.

Software Latencies

See "Dispatch Latency" for information about latencies in real-time applications.