Context Switches

The Thread\Context Switches/sec counter in System Monitor provides another perspective on how the operating system schedules threads to run on the processor. A context switch occurs when the kernel switches the processor from one thread to another. A context switch might also occur when a thread with a higher priority than the running thread becomes ready or when a running thread must wait for some reason (such as an I/O operation). The Thread\Context Switches/sec counter value increases when the thread gets or loses the time of the processor.

In the course of a context switch, at least two threads are changing their thread state. However, one of the threads may be the idle thread of a given processor. A careful examination of context switch data reveals the patterns of processor use for a thread and indicates how efficiently a thread shares the processor with other threads of the process or other processes.

The System\Context Switches/sec counter that reports systemwide context switches should be close to if not identical to the value provided by the _Total instance of the Thread\Context Switches/sec counter. Monitoring over time should help you determine the range by which the two counters' value might vary.

Interpret the data cautiously. A thread that is heavily usingthe processor lowers the rate of context switches because it does not allow much processor time for other processes' threads. A high rate of context switching means that the processor is being shared repeatedly—for example, by many threads of equal priority. It is a good practice to minimize the context switching rate by reducing the number of active threads on the system. The use of thread pooling, I/O completion ports, and asynchronous I/O can reduce the number of active threads. Consult your in-house developers or application vendors to determine if the applications you are running provide tuning features that include limiting the number of threads.

A context switching rate of 300 per second per processor is a moderate amount; a rate of 1000 per second or more is high. Values at this high level may be a problem.

You can determine whether context switching is excessive by comparing it with the value of Processor\% Privileged Time. If this counter is at 40 percent or more and the context-switching rate is high, then you can investigate the cause for high rates of context switches.

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