Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!samsung!xylogics!transfer!lectroid!jjmhome!banyan!gil From: gil@banyan.UUCP (Gil Pilz@Eng@Banyan) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Macintosh OS Message-ID: <872@banyan.UUCP> Date: 5 Jun 90 18:17:21 GMT References: <1990May30.230248.6200@Neon.Stanford.EDU> <1935@key.COM> <30273@ut-emx.UUCP> <76700207@p.cs.uiuc.edu> <402@newave.UUCP> <1990Jun2.132847.14292@oracle.com> <26437.266ae612@vaxb.acs.unt.edu> Reply-To: gil@banyan.UUCP (Gil Pilz@Eng@Banyan) Organization: Banyan Systems, Inc. Lines: 19 In article <26437.266ae612@vaxb.acs.unt.edu> ac08@vaxb.acs.unt.edu writes: >In article , peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) writes: >> Exactly. An operating system is basically a resource manager for programs. >> And one of the most important resources avalable is CPU time. An operating >> system that does not manage that resource is so primitive as to barely >> qualify for the name. >Oh, yeah, real important. For most small (single-user) machines, the CPU is >really "working" at about 1% of capacity... and the few times it's up >to that capacity, it's usually doing something to interface with a user... Irrelevant. "How much" it's working isn't nearly as important as what it's working on. If some background process has grabbed the CPU and won't let me into my editor it doesn't _matter_ if this process memory-bound, disk-bound, or hide-bound. From my point of view I'm not getting anything done. Without a scheduler to give me the CPU while the other process is waiting I really am wasting the CPU. Gilbert Pilz Jr. "sick, and proud of it" gil@banyan.com