Ch3 processes

Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition,
Chapter 3: Processes

3.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition
Chapter 3: Processes
 Process Concept
 Process Scheduling
 Operations on Processes
 Interprocess Communication
 Threads
 Multithreading

Objectives
 To introduce the notion of a process -- a program in execution,
which forms the basis of all computation
 To describe the various features of processes, including
scheduling, creation and termination, and communication
 To describe communication in client-server systems

Process Concept
 An operating system executes a variety of programs:
 Batch system – jobs
 Time-shared systems – user programs or tasks
 Textbook uses the terms job and process almost interchangeably
 Process – a program in execution; process execution must
progress in sequential fashion
 A process includes:
 program counter
 stack
 data section

Process in Memory

Process State
 As a process executes, it changes state
 new: The process is being created
 running: Instructions are being executed
 waiting: The process is waiting for some event to occur
 ready: The process is waiting to be assigned to a processor
 terminated: The process has finished execution

Diagram of Process State

Process Control Block (PCB)
Information associated with each process
 Process state
 Program counter
 CPU registers
 CPU scheduling information
 Memory-management information
 Accounting information
 I/O status information

Process Control Block (PCB)

CPU Switch From Process to Process

Scheduling
The objective of multiprogramming is to have
some process running at all times, so as to
maximize CPU utilization. The objective of time-
sharing is to switch the CPU among processes so
frequently that users can interact with each
program while it is running. A uniprocessor
system can have only one running process.If
more processes exist, the rest must wait until the
CPU is free and can be rescheduled.

Process Scheduling Queues
 Job queue – set of all processes in the system
 Ready queue – set of all processes residing in main memory,
ready and waiting to execute
 Device queues – set of processes waiting for an I/O device
 Processes migrate among the various queues

Ready Queue And Various I/O Device Queues

Representation of Process Scheduling

1)The process could issue an I/O request, and
then be placed in an I/O queue.
2)The process could create a new subprocess
and wait for its termination.
3)The process could be removed forcibly from
the CPU, as a result of an interrupt, and be put
back in the ready queue.
Several events during execution

Schedulers
 Long-term scheduler (or job scheduler) – selects which
processes should be brought into the ready queue
 Short-term scheduler (or CPU scheduler) – selects which
process should be executed next and allocates CPU

Addition of Medium Term Scheduling

Schedulers (Cont)
 Short-term scheduler is invoked very frequently (milliseconds) 
(must be fast)
 Long-term scheduler is invoked very infrequently (seconds,
minutes)  (may be slow)
 The long-term scheduler controls the degree of multiprogramming
 Processes can be described as either:
 I/O-bound process – spends more time doing I/O than
computations, many short CPU bursts
 CPU-bound process – spends more time doing computations;
few very long CPU bursts

Context Switch
 When CPU switches to another process, the system must save the state of
the old process and load the saved state for the new process via a context
switch
 Context of a process represented in the PCB
 Context-switch time is overhead; the system does no useful work while
switching
 Time dependent on hardware support

Process Creation
 Parent process create children processes, which, in turn create other
processes, forming a tree of processes
 Generally, process identified and managed via a process identifier (pid)
 Resource sharing
 Parent and children share all resources
 Children share subset of parent’s resources
 Parent and child share no resources
 Execution
 Parent and children execute concurrently
 Parent waits until children terminate

Process Creation (Cont)
 Address space
 Child duplicate of parent
 Child has a program loaded into it
 UNIX examples
 fork system call creates new process
 exec system call used after a fork to replace the process’ memory
space with a new program

Process Termination
 Process executes last statement and asks the operating system to
delete it (exit)
 Output data from child to parent (via wait)
 Process’ resources are deallocated by operating system
 Parent may terminate execution of children processes (abort)
 Child has exceeded allocated resources
 Task assigned to child is no longer required
 If parent is exiting
 Some operating system do not allow child to continue if its
parent terminates
– All children terminated - cascading termination

Interprocess Communication
 Processes within a system may be independent or cooperating
 Cooperating process can affect or be affected by other processes,
including sharing data
 Reasons for cooperating processes:
 Information sharing
 Computation speedup
 Modularity
 Convenience
 Cooperating processes need interprocess communication (IPC)
 Two models of IPC
 Shared memory
 Message passing

Communications Models

Interprocess Communication – Message Passing
 Mechanism for processes to communicate and to synchronize their actions
 Message system – processes communicate with each other without
resorting to shared variables
 IPC facility provides two operations:
 send(message) – message size fixed or variable
 receive(message)
 If P and Q wish to communicate, they need to:
 establish a communication link between them
 exchange messages via send/receive
 Implementation of communication link
 physical (e.g., shared memory, hardware bus)
 logical (e.g., logical properties)

Direct Communication
 Processes must name each other explicitly:
 send (P, message) – send a message to process P
 receive(Q, message) – receive a message from process Q
 Properties of communication link
 Links are established automatically
 A link is associated with exactly one pair of communicating processes
 Between each pair there exists exactly one link
 The link may be unidirectional, but is usually bi-directional

Indirect Communication
 Messages are directed and received from mailboxes (also referred to as
ports)
 Each mailbox has a unique id
 Processes can communicate only if they share a mailbox
 send(A,message)
 receive(A,message)
 Properties of communication link
 Link established only if processes share a common mailbox
 A link may be associated with many processes
 Each pair of processes may share several communication links
 Link may be unidirectional or bi-directional

Synchronization
 Message passing may be either blocking or non-blocking
 Blocking is considered synchronous
 Blocking send has the sender block until the message is
received
 Blocking receive has the receiver block until a message is
available
 Non-blocking is considered asynchronous
 Non-blocking send has the sender send the message and
continue
 Non-blocking receive has the receiver receive a valid message
or null

Buffering
 Queue of messages attached to the link; implemented in one of three
ways
1. Zero capacity – 0 messages
Sender must wait for receiver (rendezvous)
2. Bounded capacity – finite length of n messages
Sender must wait if link full
3. Unbounded capacity – infinite length
Sender never waits

Ch3 processes

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Ch3 processes