Multitasking

Overview

Concurrency with respect to processes is called multitasking. A time slice refers to each time period that a process executes a portion of its logical control flow.

Using a cooperative approach, the operating system trusts each process to periodically give up the CPU so the OS can decide to run another task. In a con-cooperative approach, a timer interrupt periodically fires that halts the currently running process and allows the OS to respond.

Scheduling

The decision-making mechanism performed by the kernel to context switch is called scheduling. The scheduler is the specific kernel code responsible for scheduling.