Cooperative Multitasking vs Preemptive Multitasking

A system can achieve concurrency by employing one of the following multitasking models:

• Preemptive Multitasking

• Cooperative Multitasking

Preemptive Multitasking

In preemptive multitasking, the operating system preempts a program to allow another waiting task to run on the CPU. Programs or threads can't decide how long or when they can use the CPU. The operating system’s scheduler decides which thread or program gets to use the CPU next and for how much time. Furthermore, scheduling of programs or threads on the CPU isn’t predictable. A thread or program, once taken off of the CPU by the scheduler, can't determine when it will get on the CPU next. As a consequence, if a malicious program initiates an infinite loop, it only hurts itself without affecting other programs or threads. Lastly, the programmer isn't burdened with deciding when to give control back to the CPU in code.

Cooperative Multitasking

Cooperative Multitasking involves well-behaved programs voluntarily giving up control back to the scheduler so that another program can run. A program or thread may give up control after a while has expired or if it becomes idle or logically blocked. The operating system’s scheduler has no say in for how long a program or thread runs. A malicious program can bring the entire system to a halt by busy waiting or running an infinite loop and not giving up control. The process scheduler for an operating system implementing cooperative multitasking is called a cooperative scheduler. As the name implies, the participating programs or threads are required to cooperate to make the scheduling scheme work.

Cooperative vs Preemptive

Early versions of both Windows and Mac OS used cooperative multitasking. Later on, preemptive multitasking was introduced in Windows NT 3.1 and in Mac OS X. However, preemptive multitasking has always been a core feature of Unix based systems.