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Let's say user A does something expensive (regarding CPU and/or memory), which takes a few seconds. Concurrently, user B needs a very small amount of computing time.

In this case, will the computing for user A significantly slow down that of user B (even block maybe?), or are these situations handled in most systems?

(I use ASP.NET MVC, but I wouldn't mind a more general answer either)

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    Did you read Computer multitasking, do you understand the general principles of threads, do you know what resources are and how they can be scarce? Your question basically asks to explain those principles, which I think is a bit too broad. Commented Nov 26, 2013 at 16:59
  • I know about these things more or less, but I guess there are several ways of do multitasking. However... it just came to me that at the moment of giving CPU time to a thread, you have no way to know for how long that thread will run. That pretty much explains that the computing time will be 50-50% by default. Commented Nov 26, 2013 at 17:13
  • The discipline of resource scheduling is quite broad. Your large-job/small-job scenario will have very different outcomes using a FIFO schedule, versus a round-robin schedule, versus a shortest-remaining-time schedule, etc. Commented Nov 26, 2013 at 19:59

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This is more of a systems administration question. Assuming the processes were the same priority in the system, the higher resource process wouldn't starve the other one, but it might run into issues if it needed to grow its resources.

There are resources on the system side that you can use to control the impact of high-utilization processes, which would be something to explore if your users start complaining.

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  • In theory, unless priorities are assigned, both processes should move along at 50% CPU, but in practice, there is a little bit of overhead in switching between processes that would make that more like 49%. Consider also that Windows system eats up anywhere from 1 to 10% when it isn't busy, so we're really only talking about 48.5% to 44%. Commented Nov 26, 2013 at 16:58

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