Group-Sweeping Scheduling

storage, algorithm (GSS) A disk scheduling strategy in which

requests are served in cycles, in a round-robin manner. To

reduce disk arm movements ("seeking"), the set of streams is

divided into groups that are served in fixed order. Streams

within a group are served according to "SCAN".

If all clients are assigned to one group, GSS reduces to SCAN,

and if all clients are assigned to separate groups, GSS

effectively becomes round-robin scheduling. The service order

within one group is not fixed, and a stream may in fact be

first in one cycle while last in the next. This variation has

to be masked by extra buffering but whereas SCAN requires

buffer space for all streams, GSS can reuse the buffer for

each group and effect a trade-off between seek optimisation

and buffer requirements.

(1995-11-12)