Operating Systems

Processes
Process Concept
An operating system executes a variety
of programs:
 Batch system – jobs
 Time-shared systems – user programs or
tasks
Process – a program in execution;
process execution must progress in
sequential fashion.
A process includes:
 program counter
 stack

data Inc. section

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 Process State

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 Process Control Block
1. Process State
2. Program Counter
3. CPU Registers
4. Accounting Information
5. CPU Scheduling Information
6. Memory Management Information
7. I/O Status Information

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 Scheduling Queue
Job Queue – consists of all
processes in the system
Ready Queue – list where
processes which are ready and
waiting to execute are kept
Device Queue – list where
processes waiting for a particular
I/O device are kept

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 Ready and Device Queues

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 Queuing Diagram

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 Schedulers

Long term – determines which jobs are

admitted into the memory for processing
Short term – selects from among the jobs in
memory which are ready to execute and
allocates the CPU to one of them
Medium term – an intermediate level queue
used in systems with virtual memory or
timesharing

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 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.

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 Medium Term Scheduling

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 Scheduler Activities
Swapping – in some other time, the
process can be reintroduced and
continued where it left off
Context Switch – switching the CPU
from one process to another
Dispatcher – a module that
gives control of the CPU to
the process selected by the
short term scheduler
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 CPU Switching

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 Program Layout in Memory

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 Execution Traces
Process A Process B Process C
A1 B1 C1
A2 B2 C2
A3 B3 C3
A4 B4 C4
A5 B5 C5
A6 C6
C7
C8
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 Sample Execution

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 Suspended Processes
Processor is faster than I/O so all
processes could be waiting for I/O
Swap these processes to disk to
free up more memory
Waiting or blocked state becomes
suspend state when swapped to
disk
Two new states
 Blocked, suspend
 Ready, suspend
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 One Suspend State

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 Two Suspend State

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 Additional States
Ready – process in main memory and
available for execution
Blocked/Waiting – process in main
memory and awaiting an event
Blocked/Suspend – process in secondary
memory and awaiting an event
Ready/Suspend – process in secondary
memory and available for execution

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 UNIX Process States

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 UNIX Process States

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 Process Creation
Parent process create children
processes, which, in turn create
other processes, forming a tree of
processes.
Resource sharing
 Parent and children share all
resources.
 Children share subset of parent’s
resources.
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Parent and child shareOSno resources.

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 Process Creation (cont.)
Execution
 Parent and children execute
concurrently.
 Parent waits until children terminate.
Address space
 Child duplicate of parent
 Child has a program loaded into it

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 Process Creation (cont.)
UNIX examples
 fork system call creates new process
 exec system call used after a fork
replaces the process’ memory space
with a new program

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 Process Tree on UNIX
System

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 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
OS

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 Process Termination
Parent may terminate execution of
children processes (abort)
 Child has exceeded allocated
resources
 Task assigned to child is no longer
required
 Parent is exiting
 OS does not allow child to continue
if parent terminates
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 Cascading termination
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