Performance Analysis of Suspend Locks in Operating Systems

Performance models of suspend locks in operating systems are developed and analyzed. Analytical expressions and algorithms for numerical results have been obtained for an arbitrary number of processors, an arbitrary number of tasks, and one suspend lock. The results are discussed and important dependencies among the major characteristic quantities such as queue length, processor speed, number of processors, dispatching overhead, and processor degradation are shown. Expressions are derived permitting the control program designer to estimate the system impact of locking during the early design phase.