Chapter 3: Processes

Operating System Concepts – 10th 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 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 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
4 Function parameters, return addresses, local
variables
● Data section containing global variables
● Heap containing memory dynamically allocated during
run time

Operating System Concepts – 10th 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 3.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

 Process in Memory

Operating System Concepts – 10th 3.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

 Memory Layout of a C Program

Operating System Concepts – 10th 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 3.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

 Diagram of Process State

Operating System Concepts – 10th 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
Operating System Concepts – 10th 3. 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
4 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 3. 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 3. Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

 Process Scheduling

● Maximize CPU use, quickly switch processes onto CPU

core
● Process scheduler selects among available processes
for next execution on 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 3. Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

 Ready and Wait Queues

Operating System Concepts – 10th 3. Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

 Representation of Process Scheduling

Operating System Concepts – 10th 3. 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 3. 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 3. 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, small memory use

Operating System Concepts – 10th 3. Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

 Operations on Processes

● System must provide mechanisms for:

● process creation
● process termination

Operating System Concepts – 10th 3. 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 3. Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

 A Tree of Processes in Linux

Operating System Concepts – 10th 3. 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 3. Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

 C Program Forking Separate Process

Operating System Concepts – 10th 3. Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

 Creating a Separate Process via Windows API

Operating System Concepts – 10th 3. 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 3. 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 3. 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 3. 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
4 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 3. Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne