Chapter 3: Processes

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Chapter 3: Processes
 Process Concept
 Process Scheduling
 Operations on Processes
 Interprocess Communication
 Examples of IPC Systems
 Communication in Client-Server Systems

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 explore interprocess communication using shared memory
and message passing
 To describe communication in client-server systems

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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
 When a program is loaded into the memory and it becomes a
process,
 It can be divided into four sections ─
 stack, heap, text and data.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Process Concept (Cont.)
 Program is passive entity stored on disk (executable file),
process is active
 Program becomes process when executable file loaded into
memory
 Execution of program started via GUI mouse clicks, command
line entry of its name, etc
 One program can be several processes
 Consider multiple users executing the same program

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Process in Memory

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 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

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 Diagram of Process State

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 Process Control Block (PCB)
Information associated with each process
(also called task control block)
 Process state – running, waiting, etc
 Program counter – location of
instruction to next execute
 CPU registers – contents of all process-
centric registers
 CPU scheduling information- priorities,
scheduling queue pointers
 Memory-management information –
memory allocated to the process
 Accounting information – CPU used,
clock time elapsed since start, time
limits
 I/O status information – I/O devices
allocated to process, list of open files

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Process Scheduling

 Maximize CPU use, quickly switch processes onto CPU for

time sharing
 Process scheduler selects among available processes for
next execution on CPU
 Maintains scheduling queues of processes
 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

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 Representation of Process Scheduling

 Queueing diagram represents queues, resources, flows

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 Schedulers
 Short-term scheduler (or CPU scheduler) – selects which process should
be executed next and allocates CPU
 Sometimes the only scheduler in a system
 Short-term scheduler is invoked frequently (milliseconds)  (must be
fast)
 Long-term scheduler (or job scheduler) – selects which processes should
be brought into the ready queue
 Long-term scheduler is invoked 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
 Long-term scheduler strives for good process mix

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Addition of Medium Term Scheduling
 Medium-term scheduler can be added if degree of multiple
programming needs to decrease
 Remove process from memory, store on disk, bring back in
from disk to continue execution: swapping

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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
 The more complex the OS and the PCB  the longer the
context switch
 Time dependent on hardware support
 Some hardware provides multiple sets of registers per CPU
 multiple contexts loaded at once

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 CPU Switch From Process to Process

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 Operations on Processes

 System must provide mechanisms for:

 process creation,
 process termination,
 and so on as detailed next

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 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 options
 Parent and children share all resources
 Children share subset of parent’s resources
 Parent and child share no resources
 Execution options
 Parent and children execute concurrently
 Parent waits until children terminate

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Example

 Why create a new process?

 Scenario 1: Program wants to run an additional instance of itself
 E.g., web server receives request; creates additional instance of itself to
handle the request; original instance continues listening for requests

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 A Tree of Processes in Linux

init
pid = 1

login kthreadd sshd

pid = 8415 pid = 2 pid = 3028

bash khelper pdflush sshd

pid = 8416 pid = 6 pid = 200 pid = 3610

emacs tcsch
ps
pid = 9204 pid = 4005
pid = 9298

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Process Termination

 Process executes last statement and then asks the operating

system to delete it using the exit() system call.
 Returns status data from child to parent (via wait())
 Process’ resources are deallocated by operating system
 Parent may terminate the execution of children processes using
the abort() system call. Some reasons for doing so:
 Child has exceeded allocated resources
 Task assigned to child is no longer required
 The parent is exiting and the operating systems does not
allow a child to continue if its parent terminates

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Process Termination

 Some operating systems do not allow child to exists if its parent

has terminated. If a process terminates, then all its children must
also be terminated.
 cascading termination. All children, grandchildren, etc. are
terminated.
 The termination is initiated by the operating system.

 A process that has terminated, but whose parent has not yet called
wait(),is known as Zombie

 If a parent did not invoke wait() and instead terminated, thereby

leaving its child processes as orphans.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Cooperating Processes
 Independent process cannot affect or be affected by the execution
of another process
 Cooperating process can affect or be affected by the execution of
another process
 Advantages of process cooperation
 Information sharing
 Computation speed-up
 Modularity
 Convenience

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Interprocess Communication

 Cooperating processes need interprocess communication (IPC)

that will allow them to exchange data and information.
 Two models of IPC
 Shared memory
 Message passing

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 Communications Models
(a) Message passing. (b) shared memory.

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 Interprocess Communication – Shared Memory

 An area of memory shared among the processes that wish

to communicate
 The communication is under the control of the users
processes not the operating system.
 Major issues is to provide mechanism that will allow the
user processes to synchronize their actions when they
access shared memory.
 Synchronization is discussed in great details in Chapter 5.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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)
 receive(message)

 The message size is either fixed or variable

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Assignmnet#1

 Explain working of Communication Models with the help of

example

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 End of Chapter 3

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013