Real-Time

Linux provides two real-time scheduling policies, SCHED_FIFO and SCHED_RR. The normal, not real-time scheduling policy is SCHED_NORMAL. SCHED_FIFO implements a simple first-in, first-out scheduling algorithm without timeslices. A runnable SCHED_FIFO task is always scheduled over any SCHED_NORMAL tasks. When a SCHED_FIFO task becomes runnable, it continues to run until it blocks or explicitly yields the processor; it has no timeslice and can run indefinitely. Only a higher priority SCHED_FIFO or SCHED_RR task can preempt a SCHED_FIFO task. Two or more SCHED_FIFO tasks at the same priority run round robin, but again only yielding the processor when they explicitly choose to do so. If a SCHED_FIFO task is runnable, all tasks at a lower priority cannot run until it finishes.

SCHED_RR is identical to SCHED_FIFO except that each process can run only until it exhausts a predetermined timeslice. That is, SCHED_RR is SCHED_FIFO with timeslicesit is a real-time round-robin scheduling algorithm. When a SCHED_RR task exhausts its timeslice, any other real-time processes at its priority are scheduled round robin. The timeslice is used only to allow rescheduling of same-priority processes. As with SCHED_FIFO, a higher-priority process always immediately preempts a lower-priority one, and a lower-priority process can never preempt a SCHED_RR task, even if its timeslice is exhausted.

Both real-time scheduling policies implement static priorities. The kernel does not calculate dynamic priority values for real-time tasks. This ensures that a real-time process at a given priority always preempts a process at a lower priority.

The real-time scheduling policies in Linux provide soft real-time behavior. Soft real-time refers to the notion that the kernel tries to schedule applications within timing deadlines, but the kernel does not promise to always be able to achieve these goals. Conversely, hard real-time systems are guaranteed to meet any scheduling requirements within certain limits. Linux makes no guarantees on the ability to schedule real-time tasks. Despite not having a design that guarantees hard real-time behavior, the real-time scheduling performance in Linux is quite good. The 2.6 Linux kernel is capable of meeting very stringent timing requirements.

Real-time priorities range inclusively from zero to MAX_RT_PRIO minus one. By default, MAX_RT_PRIO is 100therefore, the default real-time priority range is zero to 99. This priority space is shared with the nice values of SCHED_NORMAL tasks: They use the space from MAX_RT_PRIO to (MAX_RT_PRIO + 40). By default, this means the 20 to +19 nice range maps directly onto the priority space from 100 to 139.