Chapter 3: Processes

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

 Chapter 3: Processes
 Process Concept
 Process Scheduling
 Operations on Processes
 Interprocess Communication
 IPC in Shared-Memory Systems
 IPC in Message-Passing Systems
 Examples of IPC Systems
 Communication in Client-Server Systems

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Objectives
 Identify the separate components of a process
and illustrate how they are represented and
scheduled in an operating system.
 Describe how processes are created and
terminated in an operating system, including
developing programs using the appropriate
system calls that perform these operations.
 Describe and contrast interprocess
communication using shared memory and
message passing.
 Design programs that uses pipes and POSIX
shared memory to perform interprocess
communication.
 Describe client-server communication using
sockets and remote procedure calls.
 Design kernel modules that interact with the
Linux operating system.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Process Concept
 An operating system executes a variety of programs
that run as a process.
 Process – a program in execution; process execution
must progress in sequential fashion
 Multiple parts
 The program code, also called text section
 Current activity including program counter,
processor registers
 Stack containing temporary data
 Function parameters, return addresses, local
variables
 Data section containing global variables
 Heap containing memory dynamically allocated
during run time

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 – 10th Edition 3.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Process in Memory

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Memory Layout of a C Program

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Diagram of Process State

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Threads
 So far, process has a single thread of execution
 Consider having multiple program counters per
process
 Multiple locations can execute at once
 Multiple threads of control -> threads
 Must then have storage for thread details, multiple
program counters in PCB
 Explore in detail in Chapter 4

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Process Representation in Linux

Represented by the C structure task_struct

pid t_pid; /* process identifier */

long state; /* state of the process */
unsigned int time_slice /* scheduling information */
struct task_struct *parent;/* this process’s parent */
struct list_head children; /* this process’s children */
struct files_struct *files;/* list of open files */
struct mm_struct *mm; /* address space of this process */

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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/Wait queues – set of processes waiting
for an I/O device (Each device has its own
device queue)
 Processes migrate among the various queues

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Ready and Wait Queues

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Representation of Process Scheduling

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 (the number of processes in memory)
 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 – 10th Edition 3.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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
 Swapping may be necessary
 to improve the process mix (of CPU bound and
I/O bound)

 or because a change in memory requirements

has overcommitted available memory, requiring
memory to be freed up.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Medium Term Scheduling (Cont.)

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 CPU Switch From Process to Process
A context switch occurs when the CPU
switches from one process to another.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Multitasking in Mobile Systems
 Some mobile systems (e.g., early version of iOS)
allow only one process to run, others suspended
 Due to screen real estate, user interface limits iOS
provides for a
 Single foreground process- controlled via user
interface
 Multiple background processes– in memory,
running, but not on the display, and with limits
 Limits include single, short task, receiving
notification of events, specific long-running tasks
like audio playback
 Android runs foreground and background, with fewer
limits
 Background process uses a service to perform
tasks
 Service can keep running even if background
process is suspended
 Service has no user interface,
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.21
small memory use
Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Operations on Processes

 System must provide mechanisms for:

 process creation
 process termination

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 – 10th Edition 3.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 A Tree of Processes in Linux

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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
 Parent process calls wait() for the child to
terminate

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 C Program Forking Separate Process

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Creating a Separate Process via Windows API

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 – 10th Edition 3.28 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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.
 The parent process may wait for termination of a child
process by using the wait()system call. The call
returns status information and the pid of the
terminated process
pid = wait(&status);
 If no parent waiting (did not invoke wait()) process is
a zombie
 If parent terminated without invoking wait , process
is an orphan

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.29 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Android Process Importance Hierarchy
 Mobile operating systems often have to terminate processes
to reclaim system resources such as memory. From most to
least important:
o Foreground process
o Visible process
o Service process
o Background process
o Empty process
 Android will begin terminating processes that are least
important.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.30 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Multiprocess Architecture – Chrome Browser

 Many web browsers ran as single process (some still

do)
 If one web site causes trouble, entire browser can
hang or crash
 Google Chrome Browser is multiprocess with 3
different types of processes:
 Browser process manages user interface, disk and
network I/O
 Renderer process renders web pages, deals with
HTML, Javascript. A new renderer created for each
website opened
 Runs in sandbox restricting disk and network I/O,
minimizing effect of security exploits
 Plug-in process for each type of plug-in

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.31 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.32 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Communications Models
(a) Shared memory. (b) Message passing.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.33 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 – 10th Edition 3.34 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Producer-Consumer Problem
 Paradigm for cooperating processes, producer
process produces information that is consumed
by a consumer process
 unbounded-buffer places no practical limit on
the size of the buffer
 bounded-buffer assumes that there is a fixed
buffer size

Buffer

Producer Produced Items Consumer

Process Process

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.35 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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
Chapters 6 & 7.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.36 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Bounded-Buffer – Shared-Memory Solution

 Shared data
#define BUFFER_SIZE 10
typedef struct {
. . .
} item;

item buffer[BUFFER_SIZE];
int in = 0;
int out = 0;

 Solution is correct, but can only use BUFFER_SIZE-1

elements

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.37 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Buffer State in Shared Memory

item buffer[BUFFER_SIZE]

Producer Consumer
Process Process

out in

Shared Memory

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.38 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Buffer State in Shared Memory

Buffer Full

in out
((in + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE) == out

Buffer Empty

in out
in == out

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.39 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Producer Process – Shared Memory

item next_produced;

while (true) {
/* produce an item in next produced */
while (((in + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE) == out)
; /* do nothing */
buffer[in] = next_produced;
in = (in + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE;
}

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.40 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Consumer Process – Shared Memory

item next_consumed;

while (true) {
while (in == out)
; /* do nothing */
next_consumed = buffer[out];
out = (out + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE;

/* consume the item in next consumed */

}

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.41 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 End of Chapter 3

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne