Increase thread quantum from user-mode

Question

Is it possible on Linux kernel 3.0+ to increase thread's quantum from user-mode? How?

This answer might be relevant: http://stackoverflow.com/a/3663250/131930 — Jeremy Friesner, Jun 24 '12 at 17:53
"SCHED_FIFO is a simple scheduling algorithm without time slicing." http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/online/pages/man2/sched_setscheduler.2.html — Jeremy Friesner, Jun 24 '12 at 17:57

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 24 '12 at 17:45

1

I doubt it's possible. I quickly found this page ( http://www.javamex.com/tutorials/threads/thread_scheduling_2.shtml ) which suggests that a thread's quanta length is variable anyway, and subject to many attributes of the execution environment.

I suppose if you really needed to it should be possible to write a kernel module that alters it, but then you're entering painful territory.

What are you doing that needs longer quanta lengths anyway? Maybe there's an alternative approach.

answered Jun 24 '12 at 17:45

Dai

Well, all I need is to prevent preemption for some time. – Cartesius00 Jun 24 '12 at 17:52
That sounds like you're wanting to develop a real-time application for Linux. – Dai Jun 24 '12 at 17:54
Note that simply lengthening a thread's quantum wouldn't prevent pre-emption -- a thread can still be pre-empted at any time by a higher-priority thread, even if its quantum wasn't expired yet. As David says, what you are asking for is real-time behavior, which is available (well, soft-real-time anyway) in Linux via sched_setscheduler(). – Jeremy Friesner Jun 25 '12 at 18:14

1 Answers1