Round Robin scheduling in Operating Systems - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Round Robin Scheduling Simulation

📖 Scenario: You are managing a simple computer system that runs multiple tasks. To be fair, the system uses Round Robin scheduling, which gives each task a small fixed time to run before moving to the next task.This helps all tasks get a chance to run without waiting too long.

🎯 Goal: Build a step-by-step simulation of Round Robin scheduling that shows how tasks are given time slices in order.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list of tasks with their required CPU times

Set a fixed time slice (quantum) for each task

Simulate the Round Robin scheduling by reducing task times in order

Show the order in which tasks get CPU time until all are done

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Round Robin scheduling is used in operating systems to share CPU time fairly among multiple running programs.

💼 Career

Understanding Round Robin helps in roles like system administration, software development, and IT support where managing multitasking and performance is important.

1

Create the list of tasks with CPU times

Create a list called tasks with these exact tuples representing task names and their CPU times: ("Task1", 10), ("Task2", 4), ("Task3", 6).

Operating Systems

# Create the list of tasks with their CPU times
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a list of tuples where each tuple has the task name as a string and its CPU time as an integer.

2

Set the time slice (quantum) for each task

Create a variable called time_slice and set it to the integer 3 to represent the fixed time each task gets to run before switching.

Operating Systems

tasks = [("Task1", 10), ("Task2", 4), ("Task3", 6)]
# Set the time slice for each task
# Your code here

Need a hint?

The time slice is how many units of time each task runs before switching.

3

Simulate Round Robin scheduling to reduce task times

Create a new list called remaining_times that copies the CPU times from tasks. Then write a while loop that continues as long as any task has remaining time greater than zero. Inside the loop, use a for loop with variables index and (name, time) iterating over enumerate(tasks). For each task, if its remaining time is greater than zero, reduce it by time_slice but not below zero.

Operating Systems

tasks = [("Task1", 10), ("Task2", 4), ("Task3", 6)]
time_slice = 3
# Simulate Round Robin scheduling
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a list to track remaining times and loops to reduce them by the time slice until all are zero.

4

Track and show the order of task execution

Inside the for loop from Step 3, add a list called execution_order before the while loop starts. Each time a task runs (when its remaining time is greater than zero), append its name from tasks[index][0] to execution_order. This list will show the order tasks got CPU time slices.

Operating Systems

tasks = [("Task1", 10), ("Task2", 4), ("Task3", 6)]
time_slice = 3
remaining_times = [time for _, time in tasks]
execution_order = []

while any(time > 0 for time in remaining_times):
    for index, (name, _) in enumerate(tasks):
        if remaining_times[index] > 0:
            # Append the task name to execution_order
            # Your code here
            remaining_times[index] = max(0, remaining_times[index] - time_slice)

Need a hint?

Keep a list of task names in the order they get CPU time slices.