Chapter 3: Processes

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Chapter 3: Processes
 Process Concept
 Process Scheduling
 Operations on Processes
 Interprocess Communication
 Examples of IPC Systems
 Communication in Client-Server Systems

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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
 To describe communication in client-server systems

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 time

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 – 9th Edition 3.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Process in Memory

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 – 9th Edition 3.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Diagram of Process State

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 – 9th Edition 3.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 CPU Switch From Process to Process

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Ready Queue And Various I/O Device Queues

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 Representation of Process Scheduling

 Queueing diagram represents queues, resources, flows

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 – 9th Edition 3.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013