Chapter 3: Processes

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

 Outline
 Process Concept
 Process Scheduling
 Operations on Processes

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.

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. No parallel
execution of instructions of a single process
 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 an executable
file is 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
 I/O status information – I/O devices
allocated to process, list of open files

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
 Process scheduler selects among available
processes for next execution on CPU core
 Goal -- Maximize CPU use, quickly switch
processes onto CPU core
 Maintains scheduling queues of processes
• Ready queue – set of all processes residing
in main memory, ready and waiting to
execute
• Wait queues – set of processes waiting for an
event (i.e., I/O)
• 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

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 CPU Switch From Process to Process
A context switch occurs when the CPU switches from
one process to another.

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 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 pure 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 3.17 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 Edition3.18
small memory use
Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Operations on Processes

 System must provide mechanisms for:

• Process creation
• Process termination

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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 – 10th Edition 3.20 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()waiting for the child to
terminate

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 A Tree of Processes in Linux

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 C Program Forking Separate Process

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 Creating a Separate Process via Windows API

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.24 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 3.25 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 3.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne