The Linux scheduler

The scheduler is the kernel component that decides which runnable thread will be executed by the CPU next.

Each thread has an associated scheduling policy and a static scheduling priority. The scheduler makes its decisions based on knowledge of the scheduling policy and static priority of all threads on the system.

For threads scheduled under one of the normal scheduling policies (SCHED_OTHER, SCHED_IDLE, SCHED_BATCH), sched_priority is not used in scheduling decisions (it must be specified as 0).

Processes scheduled under one of the real-time policies (SCHED_FIFO, SCHED_RR) have a sched_priority value in the range 1 (low) to 99 (high). (As the numbers imply, real-time threads always have higher priority than normal threads.)

Conceptually, the scheduler maintains a list of runnable threads for each possible sched_priority value. In order to determine which thread runs next, the scheduler looks for the nonempty list with the highest static priority and selects the thread at the head of this list.

A thread’s scheduling policy determines where it will be inserted into the list of threads with equal static priority and how it will move inside this list.

All scheduling is preemptive: if a thread with a higher static priority becomes ready to run, the currently running thread will be preempted and returned to the wait list for its static priority level. The scheduling policy determines the ordering only within the list of runnable threads with equal static priority.

SCHED_FIFO First in-first out scheduling

SCHED_FIFO can be used only with static priorities higher than 0, which means that when a SCHED_FIFO threads becomes runnable, it will always immediately preempt any currently running SCHED_OTHER, SCHED_BATCH, or SCHED_IDLE thread. SCHED_FIFO is a simple scheduling algorithm without time slicing. For threads scheduled under the SCHED_FIFO policy, the following rules apply:

• A SCHED_FIFO thread that has been preempted by another thread of higher priority will stay at the head of the list for its priority and will resume execution as soon as all threads of higher priority are blocked again.
• When a SCHED_FIFO thread becomes runnable, it will be inserted at the end of the list for its priority.
• A call to sched_setscheduler(2), sched_setparam(2), or sched_setattr(2) will put the SCHED_FIFO (or SCHED_RR) thread identified by pid at the start of the list if it was runnable. As a consequence, it may preempt the currently running thread if it has the same priority. (POSIX.1 specifies that the thread should go to the end of the list.)
• A thread calling sched_yield(2) will be put at the end of the list.

No other events will move a thread scheduled under the SCHED_FIFO policy in the wait list of runnable threads with equal static priority.

A SCHED_FIFO thread runs until either it is blocked by an I/O request, it is preempted by a higher priority thread, or it calls sched_yield(2).

SCHED_RR Round-robin scheduling

SCHED_RR is a simple enhancement of SCHED_FIFO. Everything described above for SCHED_FIFO also applies to SCHED_RR, except that each thread is allowed to run only for a maximum time quantum. If a SCHED_RR thread has been running for a time period equal to or longer than the time quantum, it will be put at the end of the list for its priority. A SCHED_RR thread that has been preempted by a higher priority thread and subsequently resumes execution as a running thread will complete the unexpired portion of its round-robin time quantum. The length of the time quantum can be retrieved using sched_rr_get_interval(2).

SCHED_DEADLINE Sporadic task model deadline scheduling

Since version 3.14, Linux provides a deadline scheduling policy (SCHED_DEADLINE). This policy is currently implemented using GEDF (Global Earliest Deadline First) in conjunction with CBS (Constant Bandwidth Server). To set and fetch this policy and associated attributes, one must use the Linux-specific sched_setattr(2) and sched_getattr(2) system calls.

A sporadic task is one that has a sequence of jobs, where each job is activated at most once per period. Each job also has a relative deadline, before which it should finish execution, and a computation time, which is the CPU time necessary for executing the job. The moment when a task wakes up because a new job has to be executed is called the arrival time (also referred to as the request time or release time). The start time is the time at which a task starts its execution. The absolute deadline is thus obtained by adding the relative deadline to the arrival time.

The following diagram clarifies these terms:

   arrival/wakeup                    absolute deadline
        |    start time                    |
        |        |                         |
        v        v                         v
   -----x--------xooooooooooooooooo--------x--------x---
                 |<- comp. time ->|
        |<------- relative deadline ------>|
        |<-------------- period ------------------->|

When setting a SCHED_DEADLINE policy for a thread using sched_setattr(2), one can specify three parameters: Runtime, Deadline, and Period. These parameters do not necessarily correspond to the aforementioned terms: usual practice is to set Runtime to something bigger than the average computation time (or worst-case execution time for hard real-time tasks), Deadline to the relative deadline, and Period to the period of the task. Thus, for SCHED_DEADLINE scheduling, we have:

       arrival/wakeup                    absolute deadline
            |    start time                    |
            |        |                         |
            v        v                         v
       -----x--------xooooooooooooooooo--------x--------x---
                     |<-- Runtime ------->|
            |<----------- Deadline ----------->|
            |<-------------- Period ------------------->|

The three deadline-scheduling parameters correspond to the sched_runtime, sched_deadline, and sched_period fields of the sched_attr structure; see sched_setattr(2). These fields express values in nanoseconds. If sched_period is specified as 0, then it is made the same as sched_deadline.

The kernel requires that:

       sched_runtime <= sched_deadline <= sched_period

In addition, under the current implementation, all of the parameter values must be at least 1024 (i.e., just over one microsecond, which is the resolution of the implementation), and less than 2^63. If any of these checks fails, sched_setattr(2) fails with the error EINVAL.

The CBS guarantees non-interference between tasks, by throttling threads that attempt to over-run their specified Runtime.

To ensure deadline scheduling guarantees, the kernel must prevent situations where the set of SCHED_DEADLINE threads is not feasible (schedulable) within the given constraints. The kernel thus performs an admittance test when setting or changing SCHED_DEADLINE policy and attributes. This admission test calculates whether the change is feasible; if it is not, sched_setattr(2) fails with the error EBUSY.

For example, it is required (but not necessarily sufficient) for the total utilization to be less than or equal to the total number of CPUs available, where, since each thread can maximally run for Runtime per Period, that thread’s utilization is its Runtime divided by its Period.

In order to fulfill the guarantees that are made when a thread is admitted to the SCHED_DEADLINE policy, SCHED_DEADLINE threads are the highest priority (user controllable) threads in the system; if any SCHED_DEADLINE thread is runnable, it will preempt any thread scheduled under one of the other policies.

A call to fork(2) by a thread scheduled under the SCHED_DEADLINE policy will fail with the error EAGAIN, unless the thread has its reset-on-fork flag set (see below).

A SCHED_DEADLINE thread that calls sched_yield(2) will yield the current job and wait for a new period to begin.

SCHED_OTHER Default Linux time-sharing scheduling

SCHED_OTHER can be used at only static priority 0 (i.e., threads under real-time policies always have priority over SCHED_OTHER processes). SCHED_OTHER is the standard Linux time-sharing scheduler that is intended for all threads that do not require the special real-time mechanisms.

The thread to run is chosen from the static priority 0 list based on a dynamic priority that is determined only inside this list. The dynamic priority is based on the nice value (see below) and is increased for each time quantum the thread is ready to run, but denied to run by the scheduler. This ensures fair progress among all SCHED_OTHER threads.

The nice value

The nice value is an attribute that can be used to influence the CPU scheduler to favor or disfavor a process in scheduling decisions. It affects the scheduling of SCHED_OTHER and SCHED_BATCH (see below) processes. The nice value can be modified using nice(2), setpriority(2), or sched_setattr(2).

According to POSIX.1, the nice value is a per-process attribute; that is, the threads in a process should share a nice value. However, on Linux, the nice value is a per-thread attribute: different threads in the same process may have different nice values.

The range of the nice value varies across UNIX systems. On modern Linux, the range is -20 (high priority) to +19 (low priority). On some other systems, the range is -20…20. Very early Linux kernels (Before Linux 2.0) had the range -infinity…15.

The degree to which the nice value affects the relative scheduling of SCHED_OTHER processes likewise varies across UNIX systems and across Linux kernel versions.

With the advent of the CFS scheduler in kernel 2.6.23, Linux adopted an algorithm that causes relative differences in nice values to have a much stronger effect. In the current implementation, each unit of difference in the nice values of two processes results in a factor of 1.25 in the degree to which the scheduler favors the higher priority process. This causes very low nice values (+19) to truly provide little CPU to a process whenever there is any other higher priority load on the system, and makes high nice values (-20) deliver most of the CPU to applications that require it (e.g., some audio applications).

On Linux, the RLIMIT_NICE resource limit can be used to define a limit to which an unprivileged process’s nice value can be raised; see setrlimit(2) for details.

SCHED_BATCH Scheduling batch processes

(Since Linux 2.6.16.) SCHED_BATCH can be used only at static priority 0. This policy is similar to SCHED_OTHER in that it schedules the thread according to its dynamic priority (based on the nice value). The difference is that this policy will cause the scheduler to always assume that the thread is CPU-intensive. Consequently, the scheduler will apply a small scheduling penalty with respect to wakeup behavior, so that this thread is mildly disfavored in scheduling decisions.

This policy is useful for workloads that are noninteractive, but do not want to lower their nice value, and for workloads that want a deterministic scheduling policy without interactivity causing extra preemptions (between the workload’s tasks).

SCHED_IDLE Scheduling very low priority jobs

(Since Linux 2.6.23.) SCHED_IDLE can be used only at static priority 0; the process nice value has no influence for this policy.

This policy is intended for running jobs at extremely low priority (lower even than a +19 nice value with the SCHED_OTHER or SCHED_BATCH policies).

Privileges and resource limits

In Linux kernels before 2.6.12, only privileged (CAP_SYS_NICE) threads can set a nonzero static priority (i.e., set a real-time scheduling policy). The only change that an unprivileged thread can make is to set the SCHED_OTHER policy, and this can be done only if the effective user ID of the caller matches the real or effective user ID of the target thread (i.e., the thread specified by pid) whose policy is being changed.

A thread must be privileged (CAP_SYS_NICE) in order to set or modify a SCHED_DEADLINE policy.

Since Linux 2.6.12, the RLIMIT_RTPRIO resource limit defines a ceiling on an unprivileged thread’s static priority for the SCHED_RR and SCHED_FIFO policies. The rules for changing scheduling policy and priority are as follows:

• If an unprivileged thread has a nonzero RLIMIT_RTPRIO soft limit, then it can change its scheduling policy and priority, subject to the restriction that the priority cannot be set to a value higher than the maximum of its current priority and its RLIMIT_RTPRIO soft limit.
• If the RLIMIT_RTPRIO soft limit is 0, then the only permitted changes are to lower the priority, or to switch to a non-real-time policy.
• Subject to the same rules, another unprivileged thread can also make these changes, as long as the effective user ID of the thread making the change matches the real or effective user ID of the target thread.
• Special rules apply for the SCHED_IDLE policy. In Linux kernels before 2.6.39, an unprivileged thread operating under this policy cannot change its policy, regardless of the value of its RLIMIT_RTPRIO resource limit. In Linux kernels since 2.6.39, an unprivileged thread can switch to either the SCHED_BATCH or the SCHED_OTHER policy so long as its nice value falls within the range permitted by its RLIMIT_NICE resource limit (see getrlimit(2)).

Privileged (CAP_SYS_NICE) threads ignore the RLIMIT_RTPRIO limit; as with older kernels, they can make arbitrary changes to scheduling policy and priority.

Real-time features in the mainline Linux kernel

Since kernel version 2.6.18, Linux is gradually becoming equipped with real-time capabilities, most of which are derived from the former realtime-preempt patch set. Until the patches have been completely merged into the mainline kernel, they must be installed to achieve the best real-time performance. These patches are named patch-kernelversion-rtpatchversion and can be downloaded from http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/projects/rt/.

Without the patches and prior to their full inclusion into the mainline kernel, the kernel configuration offers only the three preemption classes CONFIG_PREEMPT_NONE, CONFIG_PREEMPT_VOLUNTARY, and CONFIG_PREEMPT which respectively provide no, some, and considerable reduction of the worst-case scheduling latency.

With the patches applied or after their full inclusion into the mainline kernel, the additional configuration item CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT becomes available. If this is selected, Linux is transformed into a regular real-time operating system. The FIFO and RR scheduling policies are then used to run a thread with true real-time priority and a minimum worst-case scheduling latency.

CONFIG_PREEMPT_NONE

This is the traditional Linux preemption model, geared toward maximizing throughput. It still provides good latency most of the time, occasional longer delays are possible.

CONFIG_PREEMPT_VOLUNTARY

This option reduces the latency of the kernel by adding more “explicit preemption points” to the kernel code.

These new preemption points have been selected to reduce the maximum latency of rescheduling, providing faster application reactions, at the cost of slightly lower throughput.

This allows reaction to interactive events by allowing a low priority process to voluntarily preempt itself even if it is in kernel mode executing a system call. This allows applications to run more smoothly even when the system is under load.

CONFIG_PREEMPT

This option reduces the latency of the kernel by making all kernel code (except code executing in a critical section) preemptible.

This allows reaction to interactive events by permitting a low priority process to be preempted involuntarily even if it is in kernel mode executing a system call and would otherwise not be about to reach a natural preemption point.

This allows applications to appear to run more smoothly even when the system is under load, at the cost of slighly lower throughput and a slight runtime overhead to kernel code.