Process-Concept
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition, Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
Process-Concept
Process Concept
Process Scheduling
Operations on Processes
Interprocess Communication
Examples of IPC Systems
Communication in Client-Server Systems
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
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 describe communication in client-server systems
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
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
A process includes:
program counter
stack
data section
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
Process in Memory
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
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 – 8th Edition 3.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
Diagram of Process State
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
Process Control Block (PCB)
Information associated with each process
Process state
Program counter
CPU registers
CPU scheduling information
Memory-management information
Accounting information
I/O status information
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
Process Control Block (PCB)
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
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
Time dependent on hardware support
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
CPU Switch From Process to Process
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
Process Scheduling Queues
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 – 8th Edition 3.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
Ready Queue And Various I/O Device Queues
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
Representation of Process Scheduling
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
Schedulers
Long-term scheduler (or job scheduler) – selects which
processes should be brought into the ready queue
Short-term scheduler (or CPU scheduler) – selects which
process should be executed next and allocates CPU
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
Addition of Medium Term Scheduling
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
Schedulers (Cont)
Short-term scheduler is invoked very frequently
(milliseconds) Þ (must be fast)
Long-term scheduler is invoked very infrequently (seconds,
minutes) Þ (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
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
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
Parent and children share all resources
Children share subset of parent’s resources
Parent and child share no resources
Execution
Parent and children execute concurrently
Parent waits until children terminate
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
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
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
System calls
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
Process Creation
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
C Program Forking Separate Process
int main()
{
pid_t pid;
/* fork another process */
pid = fork();
if (pid < 0) { /* error occurred */
fprintf(stderr, "Fork Failed");
exit(-1);
}
else if (pid == 0) { /* child process */
execlp("/bin/ls", "ls", NULL);
}
else { /* parent process */
/* parent will wait for the child to
complete */
wait (NULL);
printf ("Child Complete");
exit(0);
}
}
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
A tree of processes on a typical Solaris
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
Process Termination
Process executes last statement and asks the operating
system to delete it (exit)
Output data from child to parent (via wait)
Process’ resources are deallocated by operating system
Parent may terminate execution of children processes (abort)
Child has exceeded allocated resources
Task assigned to child is no longer required
If parent is exiting
4 Some operating system do not allow child to continue if
its parent terminates
– All children terminated - cascading termination
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
Interprocess Communication
Processes within a system may be independent or cooperating
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
Reasons for cooperating processes:
Information sharing
Computation speedup
Modularity
Convenience
Cooperating processes need interprocess communication
(IPC)
Two models of IPC
Shared memory
Message passing
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
Communications Models
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
Single and Multithreaded Processes
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
Benefits
Responsiveness
Resource Sharing
Economy
Scalability (utilization of multiprocessor architecture)
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.28 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
Process vs Thread Performance
Linux / Unix (Modern
Operation Windows 11
Kernels)
~10x slower than thread ~5-10x slower than
Process Creation
creation thread creation
Relatively fast (few Very fast, especially
Thread Creation microseconds with APIs with pthread_create (~5-
like CreateThread) 10 µs on average)
Context Switching ~2-5x slower than thread ~2-5x slower than thread
(Process) switching switching
Context Switching
Efficient, ~1-5 µs typical Efficient, ~1-5 µs typical
(Thread)
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.29 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
Multithreading Models
There are two types of threads to be managed in a modern system:
User threads and kernel threads.
User threads are supported above the kernel, without kernel
support. These are the threads that application programmers would
put into their programs.
Kernel threads are supported within the kernel of the OS itself. All
modern OSes support kernel level threads, allowing the kernel to
perform multiple simultaneous tasks and/or to service multiple kernel
system calls simultaneously.
In a specific implementation, the user threads must be mapped to
kernel threads, using one of the following strategies.
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.30 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
Many-to-One Model
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.31 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
One-to-One
Each user-level thread maps to kernel thread
Examples
Windows NT/XP/2000
Linux
Solaris 9 and later
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.32 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
One-to-one Model
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.33 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
Many-to-Many Model
Allows many user level threads to be mapped to many
kernel threads
Allows the operating system to create a sufficient
number of kernel threads
Solaris prior to version 9
Windows NT/2000 with the ThreadFiber package
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.34 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
Many-to-Many Model
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 3.35 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009