What is the role of the long-term scheduler in an operating system?
a) To decide which processes should be admitted into the ready queue
b) To allocate CPU time to processes
c) To manage memory allocation for processes
d) To handle I/O requests from running processes
Answer:
a) To decide which processes should be admitted into the ready queue
Explanation:
The long-term scheduler, also known as the job scheduler, controls the degree of multiprogramming in the system by deciding which processes are admitted into the ready queue. It determines when new processes should be loaded into memory and made ready for execution.
Long-term scheduling plays a crucial role in balancing the load on the CPU, ensuring that there are enough processes to keep the CPU busy without overwhelming the system with too many processes.
In systems where long-term scheduling is used, it is responsible for optimizing system throughput by carefully selecting which jobs to admit for processing.