B70-4 Theory of Scheduling

Scheduling and resource allocation have come to the forefront of the problems that confront the designers of computer systems. This is particularly true in time-sharing, multiprogramming, and real-time systems, but it is also the case for somewhat less sophisticated systems due to problems created by disk accessing. Theory of Scheduling is a very readable treatment of some of the "classical" solutions to scheduling problems, as well as some heuristic ad hoc approaches that are suitable in particular computer environments. The operating systems designer should not consider this book as the panacea for all of his ills, however, because the methodology that is given for solving his scheduling problems may be unsatisfactory in the context in which he chooses to use it. For example, in a real-time system the scheduling algorithm must satisfy constraints on maximum computation time which are not necessarily satisfied by the algorithms described in the text.