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Week 5

The operating system manages computer hardware by acting as an interface between the user and hardware. It performs basic tasks like input/output, disk management, and controlling peripherals. Key hardware management tasks of the OS include memory management, device management, processor management, file management, and I/O management. The OS allocates resources like memory, processors, and devices among running processes and deallocates them when no longer needed. It also communicates with components like cooling fans to ensure the system remains stable.

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Umer Azhar
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17 views4 pages

Week 5

The operating system manages computer hardware by acting as an interface between the user and hardware. It performs basic tasks like input/output, disk management, and controlling peripherals. Key hardware management tasks of the OS include memory management, device management, processor management, file management, and I/O management. The OS allocates resources like memory, processors, and devices among running processes and deallocates them when no longer needed. It also communicates with components like cooling fans to ensure the system remains stable.

Uploaded by

Umer Azhar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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How the operating system manages computer hardware:

Operating systems work as an interface between the user and the computer hardware.
It is a software which performs the basic tasks like input, output, disk management,
controlling peripherals etc. Windows, Linux etc. are some examples of operating
systems.

These are some important tasks of the OS by which it manages the system hardware
efficiently, which are as follows −

Memory management:

Device management

Processor management

File Management

I/O Management

Fans and Cooling

Networking

Memory management:

Memory management refers to the management of the primary memory

 Each executing process resides in main memory.


 OS keeps track of memory,
 Allocates memory between processes,
 Deallocates the memory when the process does not require the memory.

Device management

OS can communicate between devices using drivers in order to use the devices
efficiently the

 OS keeps track of devices


 Allocates these devices to different processes as per the request made by the
processes.
 De-allocates these devices to different processes as per the request made by the
processes.

Processor management

Like memory and devices, managing the processor is one of the important tasks of
an OS.
It allocates the processor to different processes in main memory to do so the OS uses
some scheduling algorithms also these are like First Come First Serve, Priority
Scheduling, Shortest job first, etc.

File Management

The operating system also keeps track of the file system of a computer normally the
file system is divided in directories which can be handled by the OS.

I/O

I/O management is one of the important tasks of the operating system. OS manages
the IO devices like mouse, keyboard, printer, display, LED's etc.

I/O devices can be of two types which are as follows −

Synchronous I/O − Here, the CPU waits for the i/o device

Asynchronous I/O − Here, the CPU execution takes place parallel to the IO device.

The operating system helps the processor in communicating to the IO devices. These
communications are Special instruction I/O, Memory-mapped I/O, Direct memory
access.

Fans and Cooling

In a computer system, one of the important hardware components is the cooling


system. The CPU fan helps the CPU from overheating. Overheating sometimes causes
permanent damage to a CPU. The operating system plays role in communicating with
both the CPU and the fan which helps to ensure that the system stays cool. This
process is also done by the motherboard's internal controls, called the BIOS, and can
be overwritten by applications running in the OS.

Networking

Networking plays an important role in distributed system environment where a group


of processors can memory, hardware devices, or a clock. The processors communicate
with one another with the help of the network only.
Flynn’s Taxonomy:
Flynn’s classic taxonomy (Flynn, 1966) depends on the number of control units and
the multiple processors available in a computer. Flynn’s introduced the following
notion

Single Instruction Single Data (SISD):


In a SISD architecture, there is a single processor that executes a single instruction
stream and operates on a single data stream. This is the simplest type of computer
architecture and is used in most traditional computers.

Multiple Instruction Single Data (MISD):


In a MISD architecture, multiple processors execute different instructions on the same
data stream. This type of architecture is not commonly used in practice, as it is
difficult to find applications that can be decomposed into independent instruction

Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD):


In a SIMD architecture, there is a single processor that executes the same instruction
on multiple data streams in parallel. This type of architecture is used in applications
such as image and signal processing.
Multiple Instruction Multiple Data (MIMD):
In a MIMD architecture, multiple processors execute different instructions on
different data streams. This type of architecture is used in distributed computing,
parallel processing, and other high-performance computing applications.

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