Patent ID: 7765548

Claim:
A method for utilizing data indicative of operating system scheduling in shared user-operating system memory space, comprising: providing, by the operating system, data to a shared user-operating system memory space that is indicative of scheduled operating system activities, the data representing requests made by processes, the data being assessable by a user process so that the user process can make a determination as to how to acquire a lock; detecting, by the operating system, an attempt to acquire the lock by the user process; and receiving a call by the operating system, subsequent to said detecting step, from the user process when the number of scheduled operating system activities exceeds a predetermined number, the user process deciding to make the call based on the data in the shared user-operating system memory space, the user process making a second attempt to acquire the lock when the number of scheduled operating system activities does not exceed the predetermined number, the user process deciding to make the second attempt based on the data in the shared user-operating system memory space, wherein the data provided to the shared user-operating system memory space comprises a copy of user-process requests in an I/O queue of the operating system.