How to know linux scheduler time slice?

Question

I'm looking for the value of the time slice (or quantum) of my Linux kernel.

Specific Questions:

• Is there a /proc file which expose such an information ?
• (Or) Is it well-defined in the Linux header of my distributions ?
• (Or) Is there a C function of the Linux API (maybe sysinfo) that expose this value ?

Answer 1

The quantum allocated for a particular process may vary:

You can tune "slice" by adjusting sched_latency_ns and sched_min_granularity_ns, but note that "slice" is not a fixed quantum. Also note that CFS preemption decisions are based upon instantaneous state. A task may have received a full (variable) "slice" of CPU time, but preemption will be triggered only if a more deserving task is available, so a "slice" is not the "max uninterrupted CPU time" that you may expect it to be.. but it is somewhat similar.

This is because the Completely Fair Scheduler, the default Linux scheduler, assigns a proportion of the processor to a process rather than a fixed timeslice. That means the timeslice for each process is proportional to the current load and weighted by the process' priority value.

For special-purpose realtime processes which use SCHED_RR, the default timeslice is defined in the Linux kernel as RR_TIMESLICE in include/linux/sched/rt.h.

/*  * default timeslice is 100 msecs (used only for SCHED_RR tasks).  * Timeslices get refilled after they expire.  */ #define RR_TIMESLICE            (100 * HZ / 1000) 

You can use sched_rr_get_interval() to get the SCHED_RR interval for a specific SCHED_RR process.

Answer 2

CFS (which is default scheduler for processes) has no fixed timeslice, it is calculated at runtime depending of targeted latency (sysctl_sched_latency) and number of running processes. Timeslice could never be less than minimum granularity (sysctl_sched_min_granularity).

Timeslice will be always between sysctl_sched_min_granularity and sysctl_sched_latency, which are defaults to 0.75 ms and 6 ms respectively and defined in kernel/sched/fair.c.

But actual timeslice isn't exported to user-space.