What problem arises as the lengths of the time slices in a multiprogramming system are made shorter and shorter? What about as they become longer and longer?

In timesharing multitasking system:

1. If the time slices are too short, the computing overhead to achieve this becomes too great.

2. If the time slices are too long, applications may become unresponsive to external events.

The task of overseeing the execution of a scheduled process is accomplished by multiprogramming. In multiprogramming, each program is divided into small fragments called times slices and switching the CPU's attention between the time slices of different processes.

If the lengths of the time slices of multiprogramming system are made shorter and shorter than the time spent for switching between the time slices increases than, the time spent for executing them.

Thus ultimately the system performs very poorly.

If the lengths of the time slices of multiprogramming system are made longer and longer than the illusion of multitasking disappears as the system takes more time to execute a time slice and hence takes more time to respond even to interrupts.