Process management

 Process Concept
 Process Scheduling
 Process Control Blocks
 Operations on Processes
 Threads
 Inter process Communication
 Objectives

 To introduce the notion of a process -- a program

in execution, which forms the basis of all
computation
 To describe the various features of processes,
including scheduling, creation and termination,
and communication
 To explore interprocess communication using
shared memory and message passing
 Process Concept

 An operating system executes a variety of programs:

 Batch system – jobs
 Time-shared systems – user programs or tasks
 Textbook uses the terms job and process almost
interchangeably
 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
 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
Process in Memory
 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
Diagram of Process State
 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
CPU Switch From Process to Process
 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
 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 queues – set of processes waiting for an I/O
device
 Processes migrate among the various queues
 Representation of Process Scheduling

 Queueing diagram represents queues, resources, flows

 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
 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
 Addition of 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
 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
 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
 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
 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
 Communications Models

(a) Message passing. (b) shared memory.

 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
 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.
 Interprocess Communication – Message Passing

 Mechanism for processes to communicate and to

synchronize their actions
 Message system – processes communicate with
each other without resorting to shared variables
 IPC facility provides two operations:
 send(message)
 receive(message)
 The message size is either fixed or variable