I/O Scheduling and Prioritization¶

When multiple I/O requests compete for limited bandwidth, scheduling decisions determine which operations complete first, affecting both overall throughput and per-request latency.

Tension Addressed¶

Latency vs. Throughput

Recognizable As¶

Elevator algorithms, I/O priority classes, deadline scheduling, quality-of-service guarantees, request queues, "noisy neighbor" problems

Canonical Sources¶

Operating systems textbooks (Silberschatz, Tanenbaum); disk scheduling literature

Transfers To¶

Database query scheduling, network QoS, multi-tenant systems, real-time systems

Scheduling optimizations like the elevator algorithm (minimizing seeks by reordering requests) demonstrate how operation ordering can improve efficiency while maintaining fairness.