Load control and intelligence in schedulers

[Charlie Price]

>
>Programs that try to outsmart schedulers can be a serious problem.
>But I wasn't talking about rewarding terminal output.  It is terminal
>*input* that drives user's perceptions of response times, and thus
>that is the only way to get a big priority kick.  Naturally, nobody
>wants to 'babysit' a compute-bound program by giving it a CR every
>second or so to keep it going (especially since a proper
>implementation would ensure that only blocking reads gave the
>priority boost).

I was a surprise to me, but people ARE willing to "babysit" a running
program if it helps their response.
A couple years ago, some folks in a sibling group here at STC were doing
something that took a long time and ran on one of the corporate IBM
(or lookalike -- we have both) machines.
I have personally NEVER seen an IBM mainframe that wasn't massively
overloaded and this one was no exception.
The mythology they related was that typing "enter" raised your
priority and they claim that experience confirmed this.
They would "babysit" a terminal and hit enter every few minutes
FOR AN ENTIRE DAY so that their job would finish during the day.

Garg!!!!

Sad, but true.

-- 
Charlie Price   {hao ihnp4 decvax philabs sdcrdcf}!stcvax!crp   (303) 673-5698
USnail:	Storage Technology Corp  -  MD 3T / Louisville, CO / 80028