Describe what is meant by multi-tasking and how it benefits process management.

Mark scheme

Marking points from the official mark scheme (May/June 2025). The mark or mark type is shown in brackets.

1. [1] Running multiple processes concurrently
2. [1] Benefits process management by allowing more tasks to complete than if run one after another
3. [1] The processes are queued as they arrive
4. [1] Processes with the shortest burst time are executed first
5. [1] It is a pre-emptive scheduling function // When a process with a shorter burst time arrives the existing process is replaced by the shorter process.
6. [1] The scheduler will continue to choose shorter processes over longer processes if they continue to be added to the queue can cause starvation for longer jobs
7. [1] (Benefit) Processes with a short burst time are processed very quickly
8. [1] (Benefit) Waiting time is minimised