Realtime Scheduling

The Realtime class (RT) can be applied to a whole process or to one or more LWPs in a process. This requires superuser privilege.

Unlike the nice(2) level of the timeshare class, LWPs that are classified Realtime can be assigned priorities either individually or jointly. A priocntl(2) call affects the attributes of all the Realtime LWPs in the process.

The scheduler always dispatches the highest-priority Realtime LWP. It preempts a lower-priority LWP when a higher-priority LWP becomes runnable. A preempted LWP is placed at the head of its level queue.

A Realtime LWP retains control of a processor until it is preempted, it suspends, or its Realtime priority is changed. LWPs in the RT class have absolute priority over processes in the TS class.

A new LWP inherits the scheduling class of the parent process or LWP. An RT class LWP inherits the parent's time slice, whether finite or infinite.

An LWP with a finite time slice runs until it terminates, blocks (for example, to wait for an I/O event), is preempted by a higher-priority runnable Realtime process, or the time slice expires.

An LWP with an infinite time slice ceases execution only when it terminates, blocks, or is preempted.