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Basics of Operating Systems: What Is An Operating System?

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Mamta Varma
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35 views

Basics of Operating Systems: What Is An Operating System?

Uploaded by

Mamta Varma
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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OS Basics

What is an Operating System?

Basics of Operating Systems


March 4, 2001

Adapted from Operating Systems Lecture Notes, Copyright 1997 Martin C. Rinard.

! Many definitions - better to describe what OS's do ! Provide an abstraction over hardware ! Standard interfaces to a variety of hardware ! Provide a user interface (not required, but most do) ! Provide an Application Programming Interface ! Manage resource sharing ! CPU, disk drives, network, sound, video, keyboard, mouse, ... ! Key objectives depend on OS (e.g., Linux vs. Windows vs. PalmOS)

OS Basics, cont.

OS Basics, cont.

Communicating virtual machines


! When hardware was expensive, objective was to keep CPU fully utilized (batch processing) ! As hardware became less expensive, focus shifted towards human usability ! E.g., share large servers among many simultaneous users ! Today: At least 1 physical CPU per user ! Run many user programs on a CPU ! Complexity managed by creating an abstraction: communicating virtual machines

Communicating virtual machines, cont.


! Simple Model: Write programs as if it was the only one running on the machine ! Virtual machine implemented over a set of interfaces that abstract a computer's hardware ! Many virtual machines run concurrently on the same physical machine ! Virtual machines share all the resources of the physical machine ! Operating system "Kernel" runs and manages the virtual machines

OS Basics, cont.

OS Basics, cont.

Concurrency: CPU
! Process (a virtual machine): a set of instructions + a state ! The virtual machine executes each instruction against its state ! A state includes all the data used by the execution stream ! States implemented by a variety of hardware registers, stack, RAM, hard drive ! Objective: Fair sharing, protection - processes cannot directly change each others states (enforced by OS) ! Communication: done through shared memory or other resources 5

Processes
! Context switching ! OS runs one process, then another, then another ! In between, the OS saves the state of the current process, then loads the state of the next process ! When do you switch contexts? ! Typically, OS designer decides policy: timeslicing, pre-emptive, priority-based, ... ! Objectives: response time, efficient resource utilization
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OS Basics, cont.

OS Basics, cont.

Processes, cont.
! Context switching is typically expensive! ! Save process state (register, I/O state, stack, memory) ! Flush cache if necessary (ouch) ! Load new process state ! Run new process ! How can we mitigate the expense of context switching? ! Make tradeoffs - threads
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Threads
! Like a process, except that some state is shared ! Threads have their own registers and stack frames ! Threads share memory ! Tradeoffs: Ease of programming + better performance vs. programming complexity + less protection ! Switching to another thread: save registers, find the right stack frame, load registers, run thread ! Typically used to service asynchronous events

OS Basics, cont.

OS Basics, cont.

Virtual Memory, Paging


! Each virtual machine should have its own independent memory space (protection) ! One solution: give each virtual machine ~(1/N) of the physical machine's memory ! We can do much better - give each virtual machine the ability to address a real memory space (e.g., 32 bits, 64 bits) ! VM, Paging - OS manages the way each virtual machine accesses main memory ! Result - each virtual machine thinks it has its own, protected memory space

Virtual Memory, Paging, cont.


! Each virtual memory address consists of two pieces: a page number, and an offset into that page ! OS/Hardware uses a page table to translate a virtual memory address into a physical memory address ! Virtual memory address = page number + offset ! OS maintains a page table that maps virtual page numbers to physical page addresses ! Translation starts by mapping the page number to a physical page address (i.e., page frame) ! Then, add the offset to the physical page address to create a physical memory address

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OS Basics, cont.

OS Basics, cont.

Virtual Memory, Paging, cont.


! Benefits from paging ! Protection - a process's page numbers correspond only to physical memory addressable by the process ! Allocation - physical pages allocated/deallocated as needed by processes (memory on demand) ! Virtual memory ! When OS runs out of physical memory to allocate, use the disk to "swap out" the pages ! Tradeoffs - more virtual memory vs. performance hit

Virtual Memory, Paging, cont.


! VM Optimizations: ! swap out groups of pages at a time ! don't let the number of free pages go below a threshold ! set the page size equal to the disk block size ! Pre-allocate the virtual memory file ! Eliminate double-caching w/file system ! lots and lots at different levels (e.g., reduce working set by re-writing your code)
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OS Basics, cont.

OS Basics, cont.

Memory Subsystem Performance Issues


! Problem: Thrashing - the OS spends most of its time swapping, and little time running processes ! Potential Solutions - Install more physical memory, rewrite your code, find memory leaks, increase amount of time a process runs, ... ! Problem: Each virtual memory reference produces two physical memory reads ! Popular Solution: Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB) with some hardware support ! Need a good design for your page tables
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Page table design


! Linear page table: all entries in physical memory ! Problem - doesn't scale well to 64 bit address space ! Two-level page table: Outer page entries point to inner pages that contain the mapping ! e.g., 4 kbyte page, 32 bit entries: outer page stores 210 entries. 32 bit virtual addresses now have 3 pieces: 10 bit outer, 10 bit inner, 12 bit offset ! Supports sparse address spaces ! TLB miss more expensive
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OS Basics, cont.

OS Basics, cont.

Page table design, cont.


! Three-level page table - like two-level scheme ! Better for 64-bit address spaces ! Inverted page table - one entry for each physical page that maps to a virtual page number ! TLB miss - search inverted page table for virtual page number ! Optimizations?

Page faults - example


! Page faults are expensive - how do we reduce the number of page faults? ! Example: Page string 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ! What happens under a FIFO page replacement algorithm with enough memory for 3 physical page frames? ! What happens if we increase memory to 4 physical page frames? (Belady's anomaly) ! What about LRU?
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