PRINCIPLES OF

OPERATING SYSTEM

CHAPTER 1
Abraham Silberschatz
Operating System Concepts 9th 2012
 What is an OS (Operating System)?
An operating system is a program that manages
a computer’s hardware. It also provides a basis for
application programs and acts as an intermediary
between the computer user and the computer
hardware. An amazing aspect of operating systems
is how they vary in accomplishing these tasks.
 OBJECTIVES
• To describe the basic organization of computer
systems.
• To provide a grand tour of the major components of
operating systems.
• To give an overview of the many types of
computing environments.
• To explore several open-source operating systems.
OBJECTIVES
 WHAT OPERATING SYSTEM’s DO?
A computer system can be divided roughly into four components:
the hardware, the operating system, the application programs, and the
users (Figure 1.1)
The hardware—the central processing unit (CPU), the memory,
and the input/output (I/O) devices—provides the basic computing
resources for the system. The application programs—such as word
processors, spreadsheets, compilers, and Web browsers—define the
ways in which these resources are used to solve users’ computing
problems. The operating system controls the hardware and coordinates
its use among the various application programs for the various users.
 USER VIEW
The goal is to maximize the work (or play) that the user is
performing. In this case, the operating system is designed mostly for
ease of use, with some attention paid to performance and none paid
to resource utilization—how various hardware and software
resources are shared. Performance is, of course, important to the
user; but such systems are optimized for the single-user experience
rather than the requirements of multiple users.
 USER VIEW
In other cases, a user sits at a terminal connected to a mainframe
or a minicomputer. Other users are accessing the same computer
through other terminals. These users share resources and may exchange
information. The operating system in such cases is designed to maximize
resource utilization— to assure that all available CPU time, memory, and
I/O are used efficiently and that no individual user takes more than her
fair share.
 USER VIEW
In still other cases, users sit at workstations connected to networks
of other workstations and servers. These users have dedicated resources
at their disposal, but they also share resources such as networking and
servers, including file, compute, and print servers. Therefore, their
operating system is designed to compromise between individual usability
and resource utilization.
Recently, many varieties of mobile computers, such as
smartphones and tablets, have come into fashion.The user interface for
mobile computers generally features a touch screen, where the user
interacts with the system by pressing and swiping fingers across the
screen rather than using a physical keyboard and mouse.
 SYSTEM VIEW
From the computer’s point of view, the operating system is the
program most intimately involved with the hardware. In this context, we
can view an operating system as a resource allocator. A computer system
has many resources that may be required to solve a problem: CPU time,
memory space, file-storage space, I/O devices, and so on. The operating
system acts as the manager of these resources.
 DEFINING OPERATING SYSTEM
Computers are present within toasters, cars, ships, spacecraft,
homes, and businesses. They are the basis for game machines, music
players, cable TV tuners, and industrial control systems. Although
computers have a relatively short history, they have evolved rapidly.
Computing started as an experiment to determine what could be done
and quickly moved to fixed-purpose systems for military uses, such as
code breaking and trajectory plotting, and governmental uses, such as
census calculation.
 DEFINING OPERATING SYSTEM
Moore’s Law predicted that the number of transistors
on an integrated circuit would double every eighteen
months, and that prediction has held true. Computers
gained in functionality and shrunk in size, leading to
a vast number of uses and a vast number and variety
of operating systems.
 COMPUTER SYSTEMS OPERATION
A modern general-purpose computer system consists of one or
more CPUs and a number of device controllers connected through a
common bus that provides access to shared memory (Figure 1.2).
Each device controller is in charge of a specific type of device (for
example, disk drives, audio devices, or video displays). The CPU
and the device controllers can execute in parallel, competing for
memory cycles. To ensure orderly access to the shared memory, a
memory controller synchronizes access to the memory.
COMPUTER SYSTEMS OPERATION
COMPUTER SYSTEMS OPERATION
STORAGE
STORAGE
STORAGE STRUCTURE
 TYPES OF MEMORY
• DRAM (pronounced DEE-RAM), is widely used as a computer’s main
memory. Each DRAM memory cell is made up of a transistor and a capacitor
within an integrated circuit, and a data bit is stored in the capacitor. Since
transistors always leak a small amount, the capacitors will slowly discharge,
causing information stored in it to drain; hence, DRAM has to be refreshed
(given a new electronic charge) every few milliseconds to retain data.

• SRAM (pronounced ES-RAM) is made up of four to six transistors. It keeps

data in the memory as long as power is supplied to the system unlike DRAM,
which has to be refreshed periodically. As such, SRAM is faster but also
more expensive, making DRAM the more prevalent memory in computer
systems.
 COMMON TYPES OF DRAM
• Synchronous DRAM (SDRAM) “synchronizes” the memory speed with CPU clock speed so that the
memory controller knows the exact clock cycle when the requested data will be ready. This allows the CPU
to perform more instructions at a given time. Typical SDRAM transfers data at speeds up to 133 MHz.

• Rambus DRAM (RDRAM) takes its name after the company that made it, Rambus. It was popular in the
early 2000s and was mainly used for video game devices and graphics cards, with transfer speeds up to 1
GHz.

• Double Data Rate SDRAM (DDR SDRAM) is a type of synchronous memory that nearly doubles the
bandwidth of a single data rate (SDR) SDRAM running at the same clock frequency by employing a method
called "double pumping," which allows transfer of data on both the rising and falling edges of the clock
signal without any increase in clock frequency.

• DDR1 SDRAM has been succeeded by ,DDR2 ,DDR3 and most recently, SDRAM. Although operating on
the same principles, the modules are not backward-compatible. Each generation delivers higher transfer
rates and faster performance. The latest DDR4 modules, for example, feature fast transfer rates at
2133/2400/2666 and even 3200 MT/s.
 TYPES OF COMPUTER MEMORY

Computer memory types : RAM and DRAM Memory Module (atpinc.com)

 TYPES OF COMPUTER MEMORY
NONVOLATILE vs VOLATILE STORAGE

• Nonvolatile storage is physical media that retains data without

electrical power. This means that no data is lost when the computer is
powered off, making hard disks suitable for permanent storage of
information.

• Volatile memory is a type of memory that maintains its data only while
the device is powered. If the power is interrupted for any reason, the data
is lost.
STORAGE-DEVICE HIERARCHY
 I/O STRUCTURE
Storage is only one of many types of I/O devices within a computer. A large portion of
operating system code is dedicated to managing I/O, both because of its importance to
the reliability and performance of a system and because of the varying nature of the
devices. Next, we provide an overview of I/O.

A general-purpose computer system consists of CPUs and multiple device controllers

that are connected through a common bus. Each device controller is in charge of a
specific type of device. Depending on the controller, more than one device may be
attached. For instance, seven or more devices can be attached to the small computer-
systems interface (SCSI) controller. A device controller maintains some local buffer
storage and a set of special-purpose registers. The device controller is responsible for
moving the data between the peripheral devices that it controls and its local buffer
storage. Typically, operating systems have a device driver for each device controller
 I/O STRUCTURE
To start an I/O operation, the device driver loads the appropriate registers within
the device controller. The device controller, in turn, examines the contents of
these registers to determine what action to take (such as “read a character from
the keyboard”). The controller starts the transfer of data from the device to its
local buffer. Once the transfer of data is complete, the device controller informs
the device driver via an interrupt that it has finished its operation. The device
driver then returns control to the operating system, possibly returning the data
or a pointer to the data if the operation was a read.
COMPUTER-SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
 SINGLE-PROCESSOR SYSTEM
On a single-processor system, there is one main CPU capable of
executing a general-purpose instruction set, including instructions
from user processes. Almost all single-processor systems have
other special-purpose processors as well. They may come in the
form of device-specific processors, such as disk, keyboard, and
graphics controllers; or, on mainframes, they may come in the form
of more general-purpose processors, such as I/O processors that
move data rapidly among the components of the system.