edu.ucar.opensky::technotes:145 UCAR/NCAR - Library OpenSky Support PO Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307-3000 opensky@ucar.edu http://opensky.ucar.edu/ homepage pointOfContact 2025-12-26T16:51:57.834959 ISO 19115-2 Geographic Information - Metadata - Part 2: Extensions for Imagery and Gridded Data ISO 19115-2:2009(E) https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7z60nfk Context Switch Time Scalability: Benchmark Results 1992-01-01T00:00:00Z publication https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7z60nfk https://doi.org/10.5065/D6JD4TRB Sloan, J. author UCAR/NCAR - Library publisher The work a computer system performs to temporarily suspend execution of one process and resume execution of another process is called a context switch. The time it takes for a computer system to perform a context switch is often cited as an important performance metric. Lengthy context switch time can result in poor performance in process-intensive applications such as distributed servers or interactive systems. However, context switch time is usually assumed to be constant for a particular system. This document describes a benchmark program which shows that for many systems this is not the case. The program was run on a variety of UNIX��-based systems at NCAR, and the results are given in both tabular and graphical form. They show that for many systems, context switch time increases, sometimes dramatically, with the number of concurrent processes running in the system. This non-scalability of context switch times leads to diminishing returns when, for example, upgrading to a faster processor in order to support more interactive users. UCAR/NCAR - Library OpenSky Support PO Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307-3000 opensky@ucar.edu http://opensky.ucar.edu/ homepage pointOfContact PDF Text theme Resource Type 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z publication Copyright Author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. None eng geoscientificInformation