Chapter 13: I/O Systems

Chapter 13: I/O Systems

 I/O Hardware
 Application I/O Interface
 Kernel I/O Subsystem
 Transforming I/O Requests to Hardware Operations
 STREAMS
 I/O Hardware
 Incredible variety of I/O devices
 Storage
 Transmission
 Human-interface
 Common concepts – signals from I/O devices interface with computer
 Port – connection point for device
 Bus - daisy chain or shared direct access
 PCI bus common in PCs and servers, PCI Express (PCIe)
 expansion bus connects relatively slow devices
 Controller (host adapter) – electronics that operate port, bus, device
 Sometimes integrated
 Sometimes separate circuit board (host adapter)
 Contains processor, microcode, private memory, bus controller, etc
– Some talk to per-device controller with bus controller, microcode,
memory, etc
A Typical PC Bus Structure
 I/O Hardware (Cont.)
 I/O instructions control devices
 Devices usually have registers where device driver places
commands, addresses, and data to write, or read data from
registers after command execution
 Data-in register, data-out register, status register, control
register
 Typically 1-4 bytes, or FIFO buffer
 Devices have addresses, used by
 Direct I/O instructions
 Memory-mapped I/O
 Device data and command registers mapped to
processor address space
 Especially for large address spaces (graphics)
Device I/O Port Locations on PCs (partial)
 Polling
 For each byte of I/O
1. Read busy bit from status register until 0
2. Host sets read or write bit and if write copies data into data-out
register
3. Host sets command-ready bit
4. Controller sets busy bit, executes transfer
5. Controller clears busy bit, error bit, command-ready bit when
transfer done
 Step 1 is busy-wait cycle to wait for I/O from device
 Reasonable if device is fast
 But inefficient if device slow
 CPU switches to other tasks?
 But if miss a cycle data overwritten / lost
 Interrupts
 Polling can happen in 3 instruction cycles
 Read status, logical-and to extract status bit, branch if not zero.
 CPU Interrupt-request line triggered by I/O device
 Checked by processor after each instruction
 Interrupt handler receives interrupts
 Maskable to ignore or delay some interrupts
 Interrupt vector to dispatch interrupt to correct handler
 Context switch at start and end
 Based on priority
 Some nonmaskable
 Interrupt chaining if more than one device at same interrupt
number
Interrupt-Driven I/O Cycle
 Interrupts (Cont.)
 Interrupt mechanism also used for exceptions
 Terminate process, crash system due to hardware error
 Page fault executes when memory access error
 System call executes via trap to trigger kernel to execute
request
 Multi-CPU systems can process interrupts concurrently
 If operating system designed to handle it
 Used for time-sensitive processing, frequent, must be fast
 Direct Memory Access
 Used to avoid programmed I/O (one byte at a time) for large data
movement
 Requires DMA controller
 Bypasses CPU to transfer data directly between I/O device and
memory
 OS writes DMA command block into memory
 Source and destination addresses
 Read or write mode
 Count of bytes
 Writes location of command block to DMA controller
 Bus mastering of DMA controller – grabs bus from CPU
 Cycle stealing from CPU but still much more efficient
 When done, interrupts to signal completion
 Version that is aware of virtual addresses can be even more efficient -
DVMA
Six Step Process to Perform DMA Transfer
 Application I/O Interface
 I/O system calls encapsulate device behaviors in generic classes
 Device-driver layer hides differences among I/O controllers from kernel
 New devices talking already-implemented protocols need no extra work
 Each OS has its own I/O subsystem structures and device driver
frameworks
 Devices vary in many dimensions
 Character-stream or block
 Sequential or random-access
 Synchronous or asynchronous (or both)
 Sharable or dedicated
 Speed of operation
 read-write, read only, or write only
A Kernel I/O Structure
Characteristics of I/O Devices
 Characteristics of I/O Devices (Cont.)

 Subtleties of devices handled by device drivers

 Broadly I/O devices can be grouped by the OS into
 Block I/O
 Character I/O (Stream)
 Memory-mapped file access
 Network sockets
 For direct manipulation of I/O device specific characteristics,
usually an escape / back door
 Unix ioctl() call to send arbitrary bits to a device control
register and data to device data register
 Block and Character Devices
 Block devices include disk drives
 Commands include read, write, seek
 Raw I/O, direct I/O, or file-system access
 Memory-mapped file access possible
 File mapped to virtual memory and clusters brought via
demand paging
 DMA
 Character devices include keyboards, mice, serial ports
 Commands include get(), put()
 Libraries layered on top allow line editing
 Network Devices

 Varying enough from block and character to have own

interface
 Linux, Unix, Windows and many others include socket
interface
 Separates network protocol from network operation
 Includes select() functionality
 Approaches vary widely (pipes, FIFOs, streams, queues,
mailboxes)
 Clocks and Timers
 Provide current time, elapsed time, timer
 Normal resolution about 1/60 second
 Some systems provide higher-resolution timers
 Programmable interval timer used for timings, periodic
interrupts
 ioctl() (on UNIX) covers odd aspects of I/O such as
clocks and timers
 Nonblocking and Asynchronous I/O
 Blocking - process suspended until I/O completed
 Easy to use and understand
 Insufficient for some needs
 Nonblocking - I/O call returns as much as available
 User interface, data copy (buffered I/O)
 Implemented via multi-threading
 Returns quickly with count of bytes read or written
 select() to find if data ready then read() or write()
to transfer
 Asynchronous - process runs while I/O executes
 Difficult to use
 I/O subsystem signals process when I/O completed
 Two I/O Methods

Synchronous Asynchronous
 Vectored I/O
 Vectored I/O allows one system call to perform multiple I/O
operations
 For example, Unix readve() accepts a vector of multiple
buffers to read into or write from
 This scatter-gather method better than multiple individual I/O
calls
 Decreases context switching and system call overhead
 Some versions provide atomicity
 Avoid for example worry about multiple threads
changing data as reads / writes occurring
 Kernel I/O Subsystem
 Scheduling
 Some I/O request ordering via per-device queue
 Some OSs try fairness
 Some implement Quality Of Service (i.e. IPQOS)
 Buffering - store data in memory while transferring between devices
 To cope with device speed mismatch
 To cope with device transfer size mismatch
 To maintain “copy semantics”
 Double buffering – two copies of the data
 Kernel and user
 Varying sizes
 Full / being processed and not-full / being used
 Copy-on-write can be used for efficiency in some cases
Device-status Table
 Kernel I/O Subsystem
 Caching - faster device holding copy of data
 Always just a copy
 Key to performance
 Sometimes combined with buffering
 Spooling - hold output for a device
 If device can serve only one request at a time
 i.e., Printing
 Device reservation - provides exclusive access to a device
 System calls for allocation and de-allocation
 Watch out for deadlock
 Error Handling

 OS can recover from disk read, device unavailable, transient

write failures
 Retry a read or write, for example
 Some systems more advanced – Solaris FMA, AIX
 Track error frequencies, stop using device with
increasing frequency of retry-able errors
 Most return an error number or code when I/O request fails
 System error logs hold problem reports
 I/O Protection

 User process may accidentally or purposefully attempt to

disrupt normal operation via illegal I/O instructions
 All I/O instructions defined to be privileged
 I/O must be performed via system calls
 Memory-mapped and I/O port memory locations must
be protected too
 I/O Requests to Hardware Operations
 Consider reading a file from disk for a process:
 Determine device holding file
 Translate name to device representation
 Physically read data from disk into buffer
 Make data available to requesting process
 Return control to process
Life Cycle of An I/O Request
 STREAMS

 STREAM – a full-duplex communication channel between a

user-level process and a device in Unix System V and beyond
 A STREAM consists of:
 STREAM head interfaces with the user process
 driver end interfaces with the device
 zero or more STREAM modules between them
 Each module contains a read queue and a write queue

 Message passing is used to communicate between queues

 Flow control option to indicate available or busy
 Asynchronous internally, synchronous where user process
communicates with stream head
The STREAMS Structure