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What happens to Round Robin scheduling when the time quantum becomes very small (close to zero)?
ARR becomes equivalent to SJF
BRR becomes priority-driven, starving low-priority processes
CRR turns into FCFS without overhead
Dcontext-switch overhead dominates the running time
Answer & Solution
Correct answer: D. context-switch overhead dominates the running time
Each context switch costs tens of microseconds of overhead. If the quantum is smaller than (or comparable to) the switch cost, the CPU spends a large fraction of its time saving and restoring state rather than executing user instructions. Throughput collapses. Practical RR quanta are 10-100ms — large enough to dwarf context-switch cost, small enough to feel responsive. Very large quanta behave like FCFS (the other direction of the tradeoff).
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