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round-robin

A scheduling rule that gives each waiting task an equal turn, one after another in a fixed rotation.

When many threads want the CPU, round-robin cycles through them in order, giving each a fixed time slice before moving to the next. Nobody is starved and nobody is favored — it is the simplest fair scheduler. The trade-off is that it ignores priority and urgency, treating every task the same.

See also

  • schedulerThe part of an operating system that decides which thread runs on the CPU next, and switches between them.
  • semaphoreA counter used to coordinate threads, letting a limited number proceed while others wait.
  • SMPA computer with multiple equal CPU cores that share the same memory and can all run tasks at once.

Referenced by

scheduler