Consider a system with 13 dedicated devices of the same type. All jobs currently running on this system require a maximum of three devices to complete their execution. The jobs run for long periods of time with just two
devices, requesting the remaining device only at the very end of the run.
Assume that the job stream is endless and that your operating system’s
device allocation policy is a very conservative one: No job will be started
unless all the required drives have been allocated to it for the entire duration
of its run.
a. What is the maximum number of jobs that can be in progress at once?
Explain your answer.
b. What are the minimum and maximum number of devices that may be idle
as a result of this policy? Under what circumstances would an additional
job be started?